


WannaCry

by stickyvalentine



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Crying, F/M, M/M, Tyrell is Marla Singer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23631595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickyvalentine/pseuds/stickyvalentine
Summary: WannaCry is a ransomware cryptoworm that exploits vulnerabilities first identified by the NSA and subsequently leaked by hackers.Tyrell Wellick was born twice. He’ll die twice.
Relationships: Elliot Alderson/Tyrell Wellick, Joanna Wellick/Tyrell Wellick
Comments: 18
Kudos: 39





	WannaCry

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the tags, this story is canon compliant and the subject matter within it is on par with what we've seen in the series, with two notable exceptions:
> 
> a) some animal deaths are discussed/depicted  
> b) Elliot's trauma is alluded to but never directly addressed and _absolutely_ never depicted.

_-_

_yes, I have a soul like you_  
_but no one sings me lullabies_  
_and no one makes me close my eyes_  
_and so I throw the windows wide_  
_to call you to across the skies_  
_and yet I know that nowhere_  
_among these glowing nebulae_  
_do any of you exist_  
  
  
_who am I, if not some stowaway in a microbe_  
_or some castaway in a seedlet?_  
_and yet I must let loose upon the world_  
_my perfect malware_  
_it is like the voice of a child saying goodbye in the dark_

_-_

**ELK CLONER** — _created in 1982, the first microcomputer virus to spread outside of a computer or lab environment_

The first birth is ugly, messy, painful.

Tyrell’s mother, just eighteen, howls him out of her and onto a plastic sheet his father, pushing forty, has laid out in the small barn nearest the house.

They’ve no phone to summon a doctor and the farm is more than an hour away from the nearest hospital. Tyrell couldn’t wait.

This suits his father’s plans anyway: his first son— though surely not his last— born in his homestead. Tyrell’s father had always known God intended him for great things, but it wasn’t until his boss’s daughter had approached him in a quiet panic, belly swelling with four months of son, that it all became clear. No matter that his boss fired him from the garage for having the decency to marry the girl, though he’d only spent a single night with her, or that he took out a lifetime worth of bank loans to buy the abandoned farm at the base of the valley. Hard work and a pure heart would clear all paths for him.

His family would return to the righteous life God’s people led in the days of Christ— he working the land, his wife teaching and raising their sons, free of any authority besides the Lord’s.

Wiped down and swaddled inexpertly, Tyrell is passed, still screaming, to his mother who, exhausted, turns her head to peek through the crack in the barn door. The heavy July sun is shining hot and bright, but all she can see is the endless stretch of life ahead of her. Her son lolling limply on her chest, she wishes to be out of her body, away from its pains and burdens. She wishes to be a girl again.

Tyrell Wellick starts as he means to go on: crying, terrified, screaming with desperation to be held.

_-_

**BRAIN** — _released in 1986, this MS-DOS virus announced its infection with the text: “Welcome to the Dungeon”_

It’s dark inside the house. Tyrell watched as Mama pulled all the curtains shut behind Papa as he left this morning. Her aching head, her shaking hands, her breakfast bowl left half-full as she cleaned Tyrell and Papa’s empty plates.

Tyrell’s father is out working the fields, trying to wrangle a harvest out of the unyielding ground and inside, Mama’s meant to be teaching Tyrell his letters. It’s the least she can do— in the four years since Tyrell was born, she has yet to give Papa another son, or even a daughter— but Tyrell knows his letters already, can even put them together to make basic words on his own.

Mama ought to teach him to read now, but the only book they have is the Bible. The words are too long and hard for him too read on his own yet, and Mama’s too tired to him read the stories. He oughtn’t hold the book himself: it’s holy and Tyrell knows if he damages the pages he will anger God and the harvest won’t come.

Instead, Tyrell is playing his favourite inside game: picking at the rotted piece of floorboard that has cracked near his crib. While Mama slumps at the kitchen table, running her open palm listlessly over the flame of a candle, Tyrell tirelessly bends and breaks the softest, most vulnerable pieces of wood around the hole in the floor. To snap off the more stubborn pieces, he uses the heel of his hand, banging them loudly enough that it ought to startle Mama. It doesn’t.

The game, which is really a plan, is this: Tyrell will keep picking at the hole until he makes it big enough to crawl through to the world underneath. He knows he’ll find the harvest his father seeks there. With Tyrell’s harvest, they’ll be rich enough that he can have other books and enough food to fill his cheeks, and Mama can have enough light to read and let Tyrell sit in her lap, and Papa will have time to hold Tyrell and kiss his head.

_(In a place Tyrell doesn’t yet know exists, a baby is born, so wide-eyed and quiet that the nurse worries at first that he isn’t breathing at all. Neither she or nor the baby know it, but the first thing he ever sees is a monster.)_

In Västergötland, Tyrell howls in agony and betrayal. A fat splinter of cracked wood has lodged its way into the tender meat of his left hand. His mother, still slumped at the table, flinches at the sound but otherwise does not stir. Tyrell screams until his cries peter off into hiccuping sobs, until he staggers up off the floor and over to Mama, scrabbling at the splinter. It never comes out.

_-_

**MORRIS WORM** — _spread in 1988, “the great worm” was the first self-replicating malware to significantly disrupt the internet and the first to be prosecuted as a felony_

Papa is angry because Tyrell exists.

Tyrell had gone six fine years without existing (“Except in the eyes of God,” Papa loved to say) and then one morning he’d ruined everything by not heeding the crunch of gravel that signalled a truck coming down their dirt road. Though he knew Papa was at work in the field and could not be driving his truck down the road, Tyrell had carried on petting the newest, babiest lamb until a long shadow had fallen over him where he was crouched against the fence. He looked up then, squinting into the sun, as a grey head asked, “Hey little one, is your father around?”

Tyrell had nodded and pointed toward Papa, who came over with a face like a storm, though he said nothing until the money was exchanged and the grey head had left with the sheep Tyrell had named Three. Counting the sheep to make sure none were taken by wolves in the night, collecting eggs from the chickens, hiding in the house those rare times someone comes to the farm— these are Tyrell’s duties.

Later that day, a different person had come and asked Papa many questions about Tyrell, and now he exists and Papa has to drive him to and from school each day, taking precious hours away from the farm that needs toiling, the animals that need tending.

Papa is angry and he is saying that Tyrell is like his mother-- that he has failed in his duties. The land is barren, Mama is barren, because it is a sign from God that Tyrell has neglected his responsibilities, that God is punishing their family for Tyrell’s failing.

But it doesn’t feel like punishment, just then: rattling past spindly trees toward town, Tyrell gets to ride in the truck with Papa for the very first time.

There are many other firsts that day.

Most of his classmates have studied together since their preschool years, so Tyrell would be a curiosity even if he weren’t noticeably smaller than the rest of his class. Tyrell learns that the way he speaks is strange, that Mama taught him some things that aren’t right but that he knows many other things no one else does, and that his hair is too long— because long hair is like a girl, which is bad.

Tyrell looks into a mirror and sees himself reflected for the first time: a scrawny boy standing ruddy-cheeked in battered overalls. The boy’s fists are clenched, his tawny hair falling into his pale eyes which are spilling over with—

Tyrell learns that if he screams and cries and cracks his fist against something breakable at school, it’s contagious. Not like at home, where Mama lets him howl and try to break things until he’s exhausted enough to sleep. In the school bathroom, he can make the other boys scream and cry too, the shattered mirror crunching under their trainers as they skitter off to safety with the teacher, who comes first to scold, and then to comfort Tyrell when she sees his tear-streaked face.

The punishment comes later, when Papa has Tyrell out in the cold November night, reciting his verses until he can’t feel his toes or the slice between the knuckles of his right hand, trembling under the bandage.

_-_

**CONCEPT** — _appearing in 1995, the first macro virus took 9 months to reach peak infection_

There are wolves in the woods.

Tyrell finds it after school— trudging through the snow to round up his sheep— the smallest ewe sprawled out far from the rest in a pool of red-brown snow, melted down to dirt where the entrails must have poured out, steaming hot. She’d been born just last week, Tyrell holding his hands out to catch her, gagging as some placenta had spilled over his wrist and down into the sleeve of his glove.

Now he knows better: breathes through his nose, clenches his jaw to fight the welling behind his shut eyes, stands motionless until he hears his father’s heavy footsteps approaching and heavy voice saying, “Wolves.”

Tyrell’s a fast learner— once he’d gotten used to school, he’d picked up on the things his mother hadn’t taught him quickly enough, and now he knows now what a TV does, what movies are best (the American ones), and which bands are best (the British ones)— but knowing doesn’t make enough of a difference.

It doesn’t matter to the other students that he’s been their classmate for 6 years or that he hasn’t lost control at school in nearly 5. The girls in his class avoid him, tittering in small groups that hush as he walks by. He wishes desperately the boys would do the same. Instead, they wait for him in the parking lot outside school, knocking his knees out from behind so he falls hard onto black ice, striking him on the back when he’s down.

They do it because Tyrell is different. Because he’s too small to fight them all off and too weak to keep himself from crying, the traitorous tears spilling out and freezing onto his cheeks every single time.

Tyrell helps his father carry the ewe— her little body tense and odourless from the cold— to the fire pit, watches him cleave logs to build the pyre as he orates: “The wolves must be starving to hunt like this— that thing has barely any meat on its body. A strong pack would round up better prey. It’s not like any of ‘em can fight back.”

He gestures, Tyrell stacks the logs into a pyre, and he lights them. Another gesture and they lift the ewe together, swinging her onto the crackling fire.

There’s an odour now, a reek of burnt flesh and death. Anything to keep the wolves from finishing their meal: “We can’t afford to lose anymore sheep before shearing season. It’s your responsibility to protect them.”

He finds the farmhouse warm and dim inside. If he squints toward his parents’ bed in the corner, he can make out the shape of his mother, curled up just as she was when Tyrell left for school that morning.

He’d woken to the sound of retching and known by the light cracking through the window that his father was already out working on the barn. He keeps his distance; though the idea of catching ill and having to stay home, safe from the boys at school, would normally entice him, he’s due to sleep at Oskar’s house tomorrow night and doesn’t want to miss his chance to visit his friend.

Oskar is different, too. Unlike Tyrell, Oskar doesn’t draw suspicion from the girls or derision from the boys. Though he’s been with the same class since preschool, he’s so quiet and calm that no one notices him at all— no one but Tyrell.

Unlike the other boys, Oskar seems to find it fun and interesting that Tyrell lives on a distant farm. He’s asked more than once if he can come with Tyrell after school to meet the animals, but Tyrell thinks of the half-collapsed barn, the two-room farmhouse, the hole he’d torn in the floorboards as a toddler that still lay, gaping and rotten, hidden under his bed.

They go to Oskar’s house, instead. Tyrell sleeps over as often as his father allows— which amounts to once a month. Oskar’s flat isn’t any bigger than the farmhouse but Oskar and his mom have a microwave and a tiny TV with 12 channels. The TV is great and so are the TV dinners and the popcorn, but the best part is when they go to sleep— Oskar snoring from the hideaway bed on the floor, Tyrell stretched out in Oskar’s bed— staring at the ceiling and pretending this mom, this room, this bed is his own.

In his own bed, in the room he shares with his parents, Tyrell’s body aches from the bruises left by Lars and the other boys, the sound of his mother’s muffled sobs lulling him to sleep.

Tyrell is jerked awake. He opens his eyes to a dark shape looming over him, his mother’s grip on his arm crushing as she tugs.

“Tyrell,” she sobs, frantic, “She’ll never make it. Nothing can grow here— she’ll die on the vine. You know it, too— this place is poison.”

“What, Mama?” He’s half sleeping still, the babyish name just slips out, but it seems to give her pause. Her hand slackens on his arm and she sits back on his bed, her eyes going dark and empty.

Tyrell wriggles out of his mother’s grip and hustles out of the house to let his sheep out, eager for once to be trudging out into the snowy fields. Anything to get him away from the black voids of his mother’s eyes.

When Tyrell returns for breakfast, he can hear retching again from the bathroom. He forgoes breakfast and instead packs his overnight bag for Oskar’s, waiting with it on the front step until his father is ready to drive him to school.

“What’ve you got there, my boy?” A wide grin stretches across his father’s face as he strides toward Tyrell. He’s spent the morning rhythmically chopping wood to a made-up tune, with each strike chanting an English word from the only poem he knows.

“I’m— sleeping at Oskar’s tonight,” Tyrell reminds him tentatively.

His father bellows a laugh. “There’s no need for that now! You’ll come straight home and tonight, we’ll catch your wolves.”

“But I—“ The knowledge that he could sleep at Oskar’s tonight had carried Tyrell through a week’s worth of dead animals, hysterical mothers, and after-school beatings. The thought of trading a cozy bed with glow-in-the-dark stars pressed to the ceiling for a night stretched out in the snow under the true dark with his father trying to shoot down wolves is the final straw. Tyrell can feel his face beginning to crumple, the familiar tingle rising in his throat and behind his eyes.

“Now, now, none of that,” His father scolds, stern but without any real heat behind it. Usually Tyrell’s tears enrage him. “It’s time to become a man. You’ll need to be an example for him.”

“For who?” Tyrell snaps so he doesn’t sob.

“Your brother!” His father cheers. Tyrell gapes. “Your mother is with child! God has finally blessed us with another son!”

Tyrell looks back through the cloudy glass of the kitchen window and sees his mother’s pale, wrecked face looking back.

At school, Oskar is visibly crestfallen when Tyrell says he’s not coming over after school, which makes Tyrell feel marginally better.

“I have to hunt some wolves,” Tyrell boasts with a shrug as they swap lunches— Tyrell’s sandwich for Oskar’s reheated casserole. “To protect my sheep. They need me.”

“Wow. That’s definitely cooler than watching TV with me and my mom,” Oskar says, sounding awed. Tyrell doesn’t correct him, but the brief swell of pride he feels doesn’t survive the beating he gets in the parking lot after school.

Night falls in the early evening this time of year, so Tyrell and his dad burrow themselves into the snow high up on a hill, rifle at the ready. At the swelling of the hill is the gamiest, patchiest sheep they have left, tied to a fencepost and gnawing emptily on some hay Tyrell had scattered for her when his father wasn’t looking. They’ll wait motionless, as long as it takes for the wolves to emerge, and when the pack makes for the sheep, Tyrell’s father will strike.

“To catch wolves, you’ve got to think like a wolf. Become a wolf. A wolf never panics, never lets fear control him. He thinks only of the prey and it never occurs to him that he might not catch it.”

Tyrell is relatively warm, bundled up in so many layers and insulated by the snow packed around him. It’s been dark for long enough that he has no idea what time it is and what his father is saying is very boring and so he slips into a doze.

He wakes to a quiet curse. Tyrell lifts his head up and tries to see the sheep down the hill, but night has fallen further in the short time he’s been asleep. His father passes him the rifle, whispering in Tyrell’s ear as he peers down the scope. “Look. Just one. No pack.” Tyrell can just make it out now, coming up over the hill on soundless, unsteady feet. “A lone wolf. There’s something wrong with it— must be. Wolves always hunt in packs.”

The wolf is smaller than Tyrell imagined, something frail about it. He can’t picture his steady pack of sheep being intimidated by such a mangy thing.

“That explains it,” his father continues as he takes the rifle back, sights the approaching wolf. “Why it took the ewe— The wolf didn’t hunt it at all. My sheep left their weakest member to draw it away. They sacrificed it distract the wolf, to protect themselves. Brilliant.”

Tyrell tries to imagine it: the weak little ewe, who had just barely learned how to walk, seeing her whole family move away from her— her own mother abandoning her the moment the mild threat of a lone wolf limped out of the forest. How scared she must have been, how she must have cried for her mother even as the wolf’s teeth tore her belly apart.

A zip and crack startles Tyrell. His vision blurs as his father leaps up in a spray of snow, cheering. He blinks a tear out of each eye with enough time to brush them aside unseen as they dash through the snow to where the sheep is tied and the wolf’s corpse awaits. Upon approach, Tyrell knows something has gone wrong. The sheep ought to be bleating in fear from the wolf and the noise of the rifle shot, but it’s nowhere in sight. Did she break free of her tie in a panic? Tyrell wonders, but when they come down the other side of the hill, it all becomes clear: the ewe lies motionless atop a twitching mess of fur and blood. His father’s shot had been blown by the wind, killing her instantly and piercing the wolf’s hide, her lifeless body pinning it as she fell under the weight of the shot.

The only sound besides the wind is their panting: his father’s from exertion, Tyrell’s from horror, and the wolf’s from agony.

The second shot catches him by surprise too.

Now that there are no more wolves to be drawn to the meat, Tyrell’s father doesn’t bother burning the sheep, but he does insist on them dragging the wolf back so he can skin it under the porch light outside the house.

The loss of the ewe had tempered his mood somewhat on the walk back, but they return to the farmhouse, he’s still in higher spirits than Tyrell has seen in years, greeting Tyrell’s mother, slouched at the kitchen table, with a kiss to the forehead that she cringes away from, her eyes flickering guiltily toward Tyrell, who pretends not to see it all.

Wolf now skinned, his father wordlessly drops the bloody knife onto the kitchen table and heads outside to rinse off the blood and gore that coat his forearms.

Tyrell, unwrapping himself layer by layer near the front door, can sense it when his mother’s entire body stills. He can’t help it: he risks a look over and sees a grimace distorting her face as she stares at the bloody knife.

“She won’t survive this,” his mother keens, voice thick with tears. “I can’t do it. I can’t do this to her.”

“To who, Mama?” Tyrell asks under his breath, so quietly that he almost hopes his mother won’t hear him.

She does:

“Your sister.”

That night, after his mother has quieted and his father has bundled her into their bed, Tyrell lies in his own bed exhausted, his body aching from the cold and his ribs sore from Lars’ kicks. He needs to sleep, but each time his eyes shut he sees the ewe getting mauled, the wolf pinned in agony beneath her dead mother, his own mother trembling in front of that bloody knife.

They’re down two sheep to sell in the spring and his parents… there’s a baby on the way. It should seem impossible that things could get anything but worse from here, but Tyrell’s a fast learner. He’s smarter than his father and he’s stronger than the wolf.

Oskar makes a beeline for Tyrell in class the next morning, eagerly inquiring about the wolf hunt. Whatever grim pleasure there was to be had in his admiration has soured now.

“You can see for yourself,” Tyrell says coolly, eyes on Lars and his boys clustered in the far corner of the room. “My father skinned the wolf last night— come home with me after school today and check out the pelt.”

Oskar looks momentarily uneasy at that, but the lure of the mysterious Wellick farm is too great. They make plans to meet in the parking lot right after school.

On a normal day, Tyrell dawdles as long as possible, taking time to pack and repack his bag, tidy his desk, go to the bathroom— anything to minimize the time he has to spend in the parking lot waiting for his father’s truck to pull up. Today, he all but races out the classroom door, ahead of Lars and his gang, ahead of Oskar too.

Tyrell picks his spot carefully: close enough to the side door to be seen by any student emerging from it, but far enough from the classrooms that a stray teacher couldn’t look out the window and spot him. It’s icy here, but Tyrell plants his feet where the salt is most densely spread.

Oskar spies him right away, waving enthusiastically as he approaches, setting himself off balance on the waves of ice. He slips around comically, nearly wiping out before wobbling back onto his feet. Tyrell can’t make himself wave back, just stands, shoulders set, his hands in his coat pockets. Oskar joins him, chattering nervously to fill up Tyrell’s silence, asking when his father will be here and what they’ll do with the wolf pelt now that they have it. Tyrell lets him yammer on— wouldn’t be able to speak now if he wanted to, his heart pounding in his throat, eyes fixed on the side door in the distance.

It happens impossibly slowly and much too fast: the side door swings open, Tyrell spots the blond flash of Lars’ hair, and Tyrell’s foot is swinging out, his hand-me-down work boot, the toes stuffed with his father’s socks, making hard contact with the back of Oskar’s knee.

Oskar lets out an agonized shriek as he goes down hard on the ice— guaranteeing the other boys’ attention if they hadn’t drawn it already. Tyrell’s on him the second he hits the ice, battering his friend with a flurry of inexpert blows that do their job well enough: Oskar screams in pain at each strike. Tyrell resists the urge to look over his shoulder, trying to trust that the other boys will be drawn toward the violence. Already it’s time for Tyrell to fire the final shot: he rears back onto his knees, looming over Oskar’s curled, weeping form, and draws the blade from his pocket with a flourish.

The motion is really for the other boys — Oskar’s got his eyes squeezed shut tight in fear or pain— but the press of cold metal against his throat is just as effective. Oskar’s eyes fly open, glassy and distant with terror. Under the blade, his throat heaves— he’s hyperventilating, rabbit-quick breaths of desperation.

“You ever mess with me again, I’ll cut your throat!” Tyrell shouts, pitched for the benefit of the boys he guesses are gathered behind him. Sure enough, they respond to his cry with a whooping roar.

Whether it’s Tyrell’s threat, the bloodthirsty roar, or the blade against his throat, something triggers Oskar into motion. He’s crying openly— the kind of desperate, heaving sobs that no one but Tyrell ever cries— and begins to writhe in panic under Tyrell. The movement shifts the blade where Tyrell is holding it, hand trembling, against Oskar’s Adams apple. Tyrell sees, as if from a great distance, the nick the blade makes in Oskar’s skin, the droplet of blood that wells up in its wake.

He’d planned to grab the skinning knife, but it was missing from the table— a red-brown smudge the only evidence it had been there at all— and nowhere to be found in the house. He’d had to grab a smaller knife that his mother used for peeling vegetables. Though it had looked pathetic in his hand at home, now it seemed as big and sharp as any knife.

Tyrell had barely managed to shove the knife into his bag when his mother had emerged from the bathroom, wiping her mouth. They’d both stood in guilty silence for a few moments, Tyrell motionless with guilt and fear of being discovered.

When his mother finally spoke, her voice had been hoarse. “Tyrell,” she rasped, eyes like smudges in her face. “You know I’m sorry, right? I never… asked for any of this, but still— I am sorry.”

Tyrell thinks about that now— thinks about saying that to Oskar now. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he heaves himself off Oskar, who is well and truly howling in terror, and staggers to his feet. His heart is pounding, his pulse is racing, his breath is short, his stomach is roiling— it feels like he could take off, straight up into the sky. Tyrell’s never felt anything like it. He chances one look at his tormentors him as he passes them, finds them all huddled together, looking uncertainly from Tyrell to Oskar, still curled up on the ground, sobbing. He knows they’ll never bother him again. He’s the wolf.

When they get home, Tyrell leaves his father to his precious pelt, heading inside to try to replace the vegetable knife before his mother notices. He doesn’t feel afraid or worried about it— such desperate emotions feel very distant now— but it’ll keep Tyrell from getting punished, at least until Oskar’s mom calls the school— or the police. That should worry him too, shouldn’t it?

He smells it before he sees anything; a metallic reek that hits him in the face like a physical blow. For one mad second he thinks that his father was wrong: that there was a pack of wolves, and that they’ve somehow slaughtered the rest of Tyrell’s sheep and left them inside the farmhouse as a warning. Then the sound of Tyrell’s quick breaths as he stands in the doorway makes it clear enough: no living thing awaits him in the dark.

With unsteady fingers, he flicks on the light that hangs above the kitchen table and sees it. The dead thing that awaits him in the dark. Tyrell sees and he begins to howl.

_(In a mythical country called America, a monster coughs and collapses and never gets up again.)_

In Sweden, a mother slices herself open with a skinning knife and bleeds out onto a kitchen table. She thinks it’s mercy.

There will be no more sons.

_-_

**SPACEFILLER** — _created in 1998, the virus also known as CIH and Chernobyl finds gaps in existing program code and hides its own destructive code there_

There was no further punishment. By the time Tyrell’s father had dropped him at school the next morning, the news about his mother had spread— the teachers too unsettled by seeing him at school, closemouthed and vacant, tears pouring steadily down his cheeks, to follow up on schoolyard squabbles. He never knows if Oskar even told on him, but by the next week, the school rumour mill had conflated Tyrell’s parking lot attack with his mother’s death, and Tyrell spends the next four years as the kid who snapped and killed his own mom.

Lars and his cronies finally leave him well enough alone. So does everyone else.

The technology programme is unchallenging, but it’s better than spending his days tending the horses his father gets paid to board on the farm. The sheep, the chickens, and the cow are long gone— those that didn’t die, sold off— and any expectations of the land yielding more than grass for horses to graze have been long abandoned.

The best part of his week is coding class. There aren’t many of his old classmates in the programme, but there are a couple and Tyrell can’t be sure what they might have told the rest of his class about him, so he keeps his head down, avoids the playful ribbing his classmates engage in, and lets himself be absorbed into the work.

He still hasn’t hit his growth spurt, but he’s ten feet taller than his classmates when he out-codes them. Praise from his instructors is nice, but it’s nothing compared to baffled expressions on other students faces when he codes twice as well as them in half the time. As good as coding feels, it only makes the suffocating smallness of his life more painfully apparent. In flow, the world narrows to his keystrokes, the way he can reshape a program to his will. Then class ends and he’s yanked out of it, back to life as dictated by his class schedule and the threatening rumble of his father’s truck outside.

There’s no internet connection on the farm but even if he had a PC and could escape into a program, it might be more bearable than the endless nights sitting in deadened silence with his father. But Tyrell knows better than to ask for money— as if they had any to spare. His father had scoffed first when Tyrell had said he qualified for a gymnasium and again when he announced he was going into TE— Tyrell had come prepared with a series of argument for why he should continue his studies into upper secondary, but his father hadn’t bothered to argue. As long as Tyrell keeps up with feeding the horses twice a day and brushing them once— none of which his father pays him for, of course— he can keep studying.

The “IT Support Wanted” posting pinned to the computer lab wall opposite his setup feels like a sign. There’s a garage in town looking to digitize its billing system. As a second year, he’s not remotely qualified, but it can’t hurt to try, can it?

Charmed by Tyrell’s skill and enthusiasm for his class, both of which he has attributed to his own teaching abilities, his Visual Basic teacher is easily convinced to serve as both Tyrell’s reference and the contact number on Tyrell’s application. It’s a struggle to manage his expectations— he shouldn’t even bother hoping to be asked to come in for an interview, but that night he goes to bed dreaming of the computer he’ll build himself with his first paycheque.

And like a dream, the very next day after school, Tyrell is slumped in a chair in a sleek, pristine office in the Beijer Car Dealership— the kind he’s only ever seen on TV or in the movies, where a corporate CEO reigns from behind an elegant desk made of dark wood. Nothing about the oily grime of Beijer’s Garage, which he’d been led through to get here, had prepared him for this. He finds himself checking his shoes and hands repeatedly, trying to make sure he hasn’t left a stain or a smudge on the white carpet or leather chair.

The door whispers open behind him and Tyrell scrambles to stand — in his mind, his father roars at him about _standing up for the grey head_. The man who comes into view isn’t tall— he’s nearly as short as Tyrell— but the air around him moves differently. His face is deeply lined, but there’s a strength to him. He’s small, but his steps have greater weight than anyone Tyrell’s ever seen. Silver hair slicked back, he eases into the seat behind his desk, unbuttoning his blazer smoothly as he goes. Only then does he look at Tyrell. Only then is Tyrell in the room.

The man gestures imperiously to the chair behind Tyrell. He sits.

“You’re Wellick?” The man’s eyes are so blue they nearly match his hair. He’s looking very closely at Tyrell, who can’t help but hunch down into the folds of his hoodie. His clothes are all wrong, he knows, but they’re another thing he can’t afford to fix.

“Well?” Tyrell’s shoulders creep up to his ears. This was a mistake, of course. “I asked you a question, boy!”

Tyrell jolts up in his seat, his posture instinctively trying to correct itself at the sharp tone in the man’s voice. “Yes. I’m Tyrell— Wellick, yes.”

The man sniffs. There are no papers on his desk. “Alright. You can start on Monday.”

That’s it? No questions, no skill test? Tyrell is gaping when he should be accepting graciously, he knows, but he can’t help it. This is his wildest dream, come true.

Seemingly unperturbed by Tyrell’s silence, the man continues. “I haven’t seen you around much. You live in town?”

“No. My father has a farm at the bottom of the valley.”

“How are you planning to get to and from work?”

“My father will drive me?” It comes out like a question. Truthfully, Tyrell hasn’t planned that far ahead. If he tells his father about the job, he can say goodbye to saving up for a PC, but if he keeps up today’s cover story of an after-school club, he has to hope his father will agree to keep picking him up in the dark. And if he says yes, he’s got to make the 20 minute walk from the garage back to school every evening, counting on his father not to arrive early and see that he hasn’t been at school.

His mind is whirling through disaster scenarios so quickly that it takes him a moment to process what the man says next:

“No need. We’ll have someone drive you home.”

“Oh sir, you don’t have to do that— I can—“

“Of course I don’t have to. But I have an SUV that’s collecting dust in the garage at home and a garage full of mechanics desperate to drive it.” Like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal. The man huffs impatiently. “Just say ‘thank you, Mr. Beijer.”

“Thank you, Mr. Beijer” Tyrell repeats, feeling that familiar tingle pricking at the corner of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says again, voice cracking a little. Mr. Beijer averts his eyes, nodding vaguely. 

A firm handshake later, he’s out on the dark streets, ducking into the nearest alley when the tears that want to well up finally come. Crying about good things is something that only happens in movies, even if the characters are never crying next to someone’s trash in a filthy alley.

His work at the garage is almost painfully easy— except it isn’t painful. With most of his brain unoccupied with the tedium of digitizing, he’s able to spend his time watching Mr. Beijer from a careful distance. Learning from him.

When Beijer says something, it happens. He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t request, he doesn’t raise his voice, and he doesn’t need to lift a finger. If his secretary doesn’t take care of it, one of apprentice mechanics will scurry in to do some task that isn’t remotely their job— including driving Tyrell an hour out of town. A smile from Beijer can be as imposing as a frown. He takes whatever chaos orbits him and pulls it in, crushes it under the weight of his unshakeable calm.

It takes Tyrell weeks to figure out that the mechanics don’t actually admire Mr. Beijer. Their polite grins and quick concessions to him are an equal mix of fear and ambition. He watches Beijer play them off one another, breeding competition and resentment between them. They barely give Tyrell a second glance, but he can feel their derision in the silence on the long, dark drives home.

He starts small— a wide-eyed question about a car part he couldn’t give two shits about, then a quietly dismissive comment about another mechanic, tossed into the heavy quiet of the SUV. Within a few rides, he has both apprentices venting to him about each other, the head mechanic, and Beijer himself.

He may not be be able to command a room like Beijer, but he’s discovered another kind of power in making himself seem small, asking questions, feigning interest. By playing the blank-slate little brother he learns that the garage is haemorrhaging money and that Beijer is reselling cars under the table to save on taxes.

It’s been the most interesting six weeks of Tyrell’s life so far, but even dragging his feet as he has been, he’s nearly done with the digitization. Soon he’ll have to come clean about being done or risk getting caught scamming Beijer (his blood freezes at the very thought).

Then it’ll be back to nights lying in his cramped bed, worrying about his classmates with home consoles surpassing him and wondering if the crashing sounds out in the dark were his father destroying equipment in another rage or falling down drunk and cracking his skull open.

Or he can use what he’s learned and claw himself up to a better place.

He chooses his opening carefully, catching Beijer on an unseasonably warm Friday when he’s striding by Tyrell’s little desk in the hallway leading to his office.

“Mr. Beijer, I’m nearly done with the digitizing, a day or two more at most—” He’d make sure it _was_ at most.

“Terrific work, Tyrell,” Beijer chimes absently, something distant in his expression.

“But in setting this system up I couldn’t help but noticing some billing issues on the sales side—“ Tyrell feels Beijer’s eyes snap toward him, his expression otherwise unchanging, like a physical jolt.

“To help you prevent any mixups or discrepancies, I could set up a digital billing system with malleable records and a robust cyber security system. Prevent any outside parties from accessing or adjusting records without your say-so. Once that’s done, it would just require occasional monitoring and updating—“

“Which you would be happy to take care of for me?” Beijer’s smile is sharklike, in that it’s sharp and hungry, and catlike, in that it’s satisfied and smug.

Tyrell nods, his pulse pounding in his ears to the rhythm of the stories he’d heard about the people who borrowed from Beijer to pay for cars they couldn’t afford, who’d turn up with their arms in slings to make their late payments. No one knew where Tyrell went three evenings a week— he could disappear on the walk from school to work or on one of the long drives home at night.

But Beijer just huffs a little laugh, the hand he’s raised clapping Tyrell on the shoulder rather than striking him.

“Smart move, kid,” Tyrell’s ears and cheeks were hot with relief and something softer that embarrassed him— Beijer sounded almost…proud. “But if you’re gonna pull something like this in the future, don’t be so goddamn meek about it. For lesser men, that’ll be the difference between respect and fear.”

So all it took to get Beijer’s respect was blackmail? The remaining months of college stretch ahead him like a sunlit path: working with Beijer and getting paid to use a computer and piling up money in the bank account he’s kept secret from his father.

“It’s a good first step,” Beijer says eerily, as if he’s been privy to Tyrell’s plans. “Now you just gotta figure out the next step— and the one after that, and the one after that. You have bigger dreams than being a farm boy, don’t you?”

Tyrell has dreams, sure, but they’ve never been more complex than: get a good job and live in a warm house with TV and internet away from anyone who wants to hurt him and have someone to love him and— he cuts off that train of thought.

If Beijer could hear this pitiful nonsense, Tyrell would just die of embarrassment.

The words spill out of him in a torrent strong enough to drown out his traitorous thoughts: “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I can’t tell you how thankful I am—“

“Alright, alright” Beijer says, voice absent again, shrugging off Tyrell’s grateful hand where it was clutching at the sleeve of his jacket. “Just tell Hilda to get you set up with whatever you need for this… security system. She’ll find you a little room on the sales side of the office.”

With that, he’s off down the hall, the world trembling a little in its wake.

Tyrell’s office is a repurposed broom closet with no window, barely space for a desk, but his desktop is state of the art and he makes sure Beijer Cars has the fastest connection in town. He hones his mind like he would the blade of an axe and begins to plan.

_(In Visual Basic Class at Washington Township Middle School,a boy named Sam teaches his classmate to lucid dream.)_

In a broom closet in Beijer Cars, Tyrell escapes into his future.

_-_

**ILOVEYOU** — _spreading in May 2000, the computer worm infected 10 million PCs through a spam email with an attachment labeled “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs” that sent copies of itself to the user’s entire address book_

Tyrell is taller than his father. That this realization hits him as his father’s stretched up to his full height, red-faced and practically foaming at his mouth, perched up on his tip toes to scream properly into Tyrell’s face about filial piety, does nothing to dull the impact of the realization.

It’s not as if he’s been oblivious to his growth spurt— the growing pains had been agonizing, as had the hunger pangs that came with it. When he’d outgrown his clothes to the point that his ankles were showing in his jeans, the cuffs of his hoodies stretched by his forearms, he’d dipped reluctantly into his savings from work and decided to take the opportunity to dress himself properly.

Torn between the urge to dress very hip, like Eminem, or very grown-up, like Beijer, Tyrell settled for smart instead: classic sweaters in deep dark tones, sleek chinos. Clothes that fits him properly, suits his colouring, clothes that won’t go out of style.

He can’t put a mirror up on the wall at home, but he takes his time in the bathroom at school in the mornings, admiring his new clothing and practicing versions of the smiles he’s seen Beijer put on.

Tyrell turns away from the sour stink of his father’s moonshine breath, tries to keep from laughing. When he flexes his fingers, he feels the catch and pull of the blisters and calluses formed by the axe handle. He’s known he’s tall for a while, but— now he’s taller than his father. Somehow that feels like _more_.

If the clothes hadn’t pinged it for him, the girls would have. Adults have always been much easier for Tyrell than kids his own age— all most adults really want is to believe Tyrell thinks they’re right. At work, Hilda’s been bringing him lunch— and sometimes dinner— for the better part of a year unprompted and his dad expects him to chop wood every day, which is how he’s come out of a 15-centimetre growth spurt sleek and wiry rather than scrawny and distended. But now, he actually exists at school; the girls in his programme coming up with transparent excuses to talk to him and touch him.

The first time a classmate had used her fingers to brush Tyrell’s hair out of his eyes and asked to meet him for coffee on the weekend, he’d panicked and made his first-ever trip to a barber shop, sure she had been trying to hint to him that his hair was all wrong.

When he’d shown up to their coffee date, she’d gone bright red and they’d stuttered through a stilted conversation until she led him out behind the cafe to feel her up next to the trash bins.

They’d dated for a week or so after that, but nothing he did with her felt as good as that first time, when he’d realized she wanted him so badly— she couldn’t wait, she had to have him, even where people could see. Compared to that moment, all the handholding and kissing and sweet talk seemed so pointless.

When he broke it off, he did it so gently that a different girl sidled up to him that same afternoon, tracing her fingers through the neat swoop of his hair over his forehead.

He can’t bring a girl home, but the ones he dates don’t seem to care— they’re happy enough to be seen walking down the hallway with him and then pulling him down over them in the backseats of their cars. He tries over and over again, letting himself be pulled in the direction of whatever girl wants him most, but that first frisson of emotion never lasts. He doesn’t think of them when they’re not around, or wonder if they’re thinking of him.

It’s so-- _easy_ that it can’t be love.

Now he’s trying it the other way around: wanting more than he’s wanted.

Lise is the prettiest girl at school, all flippy blonde hair and sharp eyebrows, so naturally she has a boyfriend. Everyone knows they’re madly in love: Simon is even taller than Tyrell, dark-haired and brilliant at football. There’s no reason Lise should waste a minute on Tyrell, but here she is, lingering outside school with him again.

Tyrell’s never kissed her, never held her hand, never even touched her— though she has a habit of laying a soft hand on his arm when he makes her laugh. That’s how he knows it must be love.

So Tyrell gives up on the tedium of dating, starts spending his free time with Lise’s group of friends: Elie, Christian, Oleg, Maja. Except for Lise, they don’t particularly like him— Simon, in particular, seems unwilling to acknowledge Tyrell’s existence— but Tyrell can work with that.

Winning them over one by one is a welcome distraction from the agony of Lise tucked under Simon’s chin, her perfect nose pressed against the taut skin of his collarbone. It’s a new ache and he finds himself prodding at the bruise in moments of boredom, lingering over the way Lise and Simon twine their hands together or the way Simon gets to press kisses to the top of Lise’s head when they say “hello” or “goodbye.”

Things might’ve gone on like that forever, Tyrell helplessly suspended in the pain-pleasure of being _just friends_ — if it weren’t for Maja.

Maja is his latest pet project in the group. He’s won over the rest of Lise and Simon’s gang and has just about cracked her: she wants someone to see how different she is, and admire her for it. Tyrell’s been making a point of noting her new piercing, commenting on the doodles she covers her notebooks with, asking her if she’s seen some obscure movie he read about online.

It’s working— apparently too well, as Tyrell discovers the hard way when the whole group is crowded around their lunch table one day.

Maja’s decrying the obscene lack of indie films in town, Tyrell chiming in with an encouraging comment here and there as he watches Simon’s long fingers braiding Lise’s hair into a messy plait. He’s never seen two people so easy with each other— they touch each other like they know, without question, that touch is welcome.

Maja’s on to some film festival in Gothenburg next week. “Sounds cool,” Tyrell agrees absently, eyes on the rapid twisting of Simon’s fingers. He’s only listening with one ear but since no one else is even remotely paying attention, he’s really going above and beyond here.

“So you wanna go with me?”

Suddenly the entire lunch table, including Tyrell, is listening very closely, their eyes ping-ponging between him and Maja. Simon’s fingers have stilled. Lise is biting her perfect lower lip, which just a bit bigger than her perfect upper lip.

When Tyrell finally does look at Maja, a heartbeat or two later at most, her face is carefully blank, her eyes downcast. She’s trying very hard to seem like his answer doesn’t matter to her, which means, of course, that it matters very much. Tyrell could crush her with a word. He feels the pull of that power like a rope around his neck, tugging.

“I’d love to,” he says instead, trying to be satisfied at the way her face instantly lights up with a grin, like Tyrell’s switched a light on. He smiles back automatically, as do most of the others— everyone except Lise. And Simon.

This would normally be enough to warrant hours of speculation and analysis on Tyrell’s part, yes, but right now he's got to focus on not letting an entanglement with Maja risk his position in Lise’s group.

In any case, two of his three oddities get resolved later that evening, after Lise pulls him aside outside of their last course for the day and asks him to join her for coffee. This isn’t the first time they’ve crowded together at the little corner table in the cafe, far out of sight of any passersby, Tyrell lending a friendly ear to Lise’s problems, but today is different.

“You know the most annoying thing about you, Tyrell?” It’s an abrupt swerve in the conversation. Lise has been venting about the latest of Simon’s imagined slights: talking way too much about moving to Gothenburg after graduation when he knows perfectly well Lise has no interest in living in the city. “It’s that you have no idea how good-looking you are.”

This isn’t remotely true. Tyrell knows perfectly well that he’s good-looking. It’s not like his face has changed enormously in the past year, so if height, a haircut, and some better clothes were enough to make him attractive to women, then he must’ve been handsome enough all along.

Still, he feels the heat of an authentic blush pinking up his cheeks as he shrugs a bashful response, if only because it’s Lise who’s saying it.

Lise leans in even closer: “You know Maja likes you, right? That festival thing next weekend… it’s a date,” she whispers dramatically. Tyrell can feel her breath on his face, smell the tarry sweetness of the caramel from her latte on her tongue.

“Really?” Tyrell says, widening his eyes and affecting a regretful frown. “I thought we were buddies. I didn’t mean to lead her on…”

“I know,” Lise says, laying a hand over Tyrell’s on the table. Oh. She’s still very close. _Oh._

They go back to Lise’s place— her mom’s got a late shift at the hospital. She keeps the lights off in her bedroom, Tyrell squinting to try to make out what posters she has pinned to her walls, what’s on her shelves.

There, in the dark, Tyrell finally gets to kiss Lise’s nearly-symmetrical lips, to press her down into the sheets like Simon has so many times before. It should be the best moment of his life, making love to the girl he loves, but that’s what he keeps thinking about: how would Simon do it, would he be faster or slower, does he want it as badly as Tyrell?

As they lie together after, he can see the guilt bloom on Lise’s face, highlighting its absence in Tyrell. It makes it easier to feel bad for her when she pleads with him not to tell Simon, to reassure her that it was just a mistake, they were just comforting each other, it would be their secret.

Of course, they keep making the same mistake again and again, and when things fizzle out between Tyrell and Maja, it’s Maja who magically drifts away from the group rather than Tyrell, seniority be damned.

Lise says she needs him, because he understands her. In the dark with Tyrell, she can ask for what she wants and he’ll give it to her, no questions asked. And in the daylight, she can hold hands with her childhood sweetheart, who is taller and steadier than Tyrell will ever be.

They make the mistake enough times that when Simon saunters up to him one Friday to make plans for a “guy’s night,” Tyrell can barely keep from looking to Lise in panic. He agrees blindly to whatever Simon is proposing, Lise tossing a nervous look over her shoulder as she and Simon make their way down the hall like a mismatched set of Siamese twins.

Tyrell shows up at Simon’s father’s sprawling home braced for a beating, but Simon answers the door in a t-shirt and pyjama pants, letting Tyrell in with a surprised smile: “You actually came!”

Tyrell shrugs off his jacket, feeling unusually overdressed in his jeans and polo. “Why wouldn’t I?” He asks uneasily, peering over Simon’s shoulder into the dark wood-lined halls of his home for any sign of Oleg or Christian. With or without them, it could still be a trap.

“Kinda thought you— I dunno— didn’t like me,” Simon shrugs.

Again: odd. Tyrell cocks his head to the side. “Why wouldn’t I like you?”

Simon shrugs again, shifting uneasily on his bare feet. “Lise is always saying what a great friend you are, Oleg and Christian too, and Elie, and— anyway. I guess I thought maybe you thought I was… boring?”

Huh. Simon turns abruptly and leads him into a warmly lit living room with same dark wood panelling as the entryway, where no one lies in wait to jump Tyrell. Simon flings himself down onto a large, leather couch. It makes him look much smaller from where Tyrell’s standing.

“I mentioned it to Lise—” What the fuck. “And she said I should just give it a shot, asking you to hang out, so—” _What the fuck_.

“You’re not boring,” Tyrell says, sitting stiffly at the other end of the couch. Simon genuinely doesn’t seem to be angry or even suspicious, but Tyrell chooses his words carefully: “And I do like you. You just always seemed… busy.”

It was true, in a way. Simon was captain of the local football team and had a lot more friends outside their group than anyone else did. But more than that, Tyrell had been sure that if he worked at befriending Simon the way he had the other guys, he’d figure things out. Or worse, Simon would already _know_.

Apparently he’d been wrong.

Simon’s still balled up all tense in the corner of the couch as if the thought of Tyrell not liking him is eating him up inside. There’s something thrilling about being the one to make him feel that small, even unintentionally, but the evening will be unbearable for Tyrell if can't get Simon to loosen up.

So, as he did with Lise, Tyrell tells a story that’s partly true.

He keeps his eyes on his own hands, the half-healed blister on the pad of his palm, as he speaks: “Look, until you guys, I never really had friends. There were some rumours spread about me—”

“Yeah, I heard about that.” Tyrell looks up in surprise and Simon, looking contrite, hurriedly adds: “Obviously, I didn’t believe it.”

Tyrell make a maintaining eye contact. “I got picked on because I was different and the guy who beat me up the most, well— I don’t know. He was bigger than me and better at sports than me, and—”

“I’m not like that, though!” Simon says, his eyes big and sorry and— “You’re safe with me.”

Tyrell’s got him.

He stays over that night, Simon lending him some pyjama pants that pool a little around his feet in a way that Tyrell likes, for some reason. He hasn’t had a real friend since Oskar, so he’s not really sure how it’s supposed to feel, if he’s supposed to think of Simon when he wakes up in the morning, and when he’s doing busy work at Beijer’s and when he’s chopping wood on the farm. When he’s in bed with Lise.

The three of them go on like that for some time: Tyrell sneaking off with Lise and establishing a standing “guy’s night” with Simon every Friday, and the two of them playing “happy couple” at school.

At first he thinks of playing them off each other, like with the mechanic apprentices, until they break up and then Lise will be free to be with him. But he can’t imagine calling Lise his girlfriend being any better than this: fucking Lise in her bedroom with the lights off one night, and then sprawling out next to Simon, sharing joints and saying with friendly concern, “Lise is scared you’ll leave her behind.”

Simon sighs heavily at that, and Tyrell feels it travel all down his right side where he’s pressed against Simon on the couch. “Just because I’ve actually got a plan for my future doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave her behind.”

“A plan,” Tyrell echoes hazily. He feels like he’s floating just inside the edges of his body, like he might float right out if it weren’t for the grounding heat of Simon against him.

“Yeah, I’m going to study Business at University of Gothenburg and then work at E Corp. Get on the executive track and move to the States.”

“What about Lise?” Tyrell asks dutifully.

He loses Simon’s warmth as Simon shifts onto his side to face Tyrell more directly. A shitty dubbed copy of _Hackers_ is flashing mutely in the foreground, but all Tyrell can focus is on is the green of Simon’s eyes.

“Look, I love Lise. I’ve loved Lise since we were little kids— I’ll always love her. But if she’s not gonna move forward in her life, I’m not gonna put my whole life on hold for her, you know? I got a plan. And in Gothenburg, things can be… different.”

“Different,” Tyrell echoes again. Something about this conversation is significant, he can tell, but without Simon to anchor him, he’s floating away from it. Or it’s floating away from him

“There are more… options in the city.” Simon is speaking so slowly, so carefully, which might be the weed. Or it might not be. “You can be who you really are. There’s no one who’s known you since you were five to expect anything from you or care you who you’re dating or judge you or—“

Tyrell jumps a little when Simon clasps his wrist in one big hand. “You could come with me! You’re the best coder in our programme. We all know how smart you are— I’m sure you’ve got the grades for it.” He’s really gaining steam, his hand gripping tighter around Tyrell’s arm. “In Gothenburg no one’s gonna think you killed—“ The weed mostly dulls the stab of pain he feels. Simon catches himself, then rallies: “We could get a place together!"

“Alright,” Tyrell whispers, and it might be the weed, but it might not be. A lovely smile spreads across Simon’s face and Tyrell echoes that too.

There’s something hard and scary about the image of himself in Gothenburg with Simon, studying in their apartment, starting their first day at E Corp together, moving to New York— but the rest is surprisingly easy.

When Simon’s grip relaxes and slides down Tyrell’s wrist to twine between his fingers, it’s easy to open them and squeeze back. It’s easy to turn his head toward Simon’s and to open his mouth against Simon’s and let Simon’s big, long body press him into buttery leather of Simon’s couch. The landslide of want crushes Tyrell, but it doesn’t hurt.

He carries on with Lise, fucking her and listening to her worries about Simon, and pushes forward with Simon, moaning into his mouth as they dream about their future in Gothenburg. It’s May— graduation is in sight. He just needs to maintain this until August, when he and Simon are off.

With his savings he’s got enough to cover tuition and his half of first month’s rent. Simon tells him not to worry about the rest— his parents make up for their absence with money— but Tyrell will find a job as soon as he can anyway. He lets Simon go on about the things they’ll do, his own head filled with the cellphone he’ll buy, the laptop, the watch.

His hands, which will grow soft and smooth.

The night after graduation, after Simon fucks Tyrell for the first time, they stay splayed out like that, starfished together, half-dozing. Tyrell had cried, just a little, his eyes leaking helplessly, when Simon pressed into him. Simon said sorry and licked the tears off his face. The _I love you_ had been wrenched out of him when he came.

After, doesn’t roll off him until the doorbell rings, and even as he goes, Tyrell can feel the thread that connects them, that lets him feel what Simon is feeling at any time, just by tugging on it. Simon is annoyed. They haven’t ordered food, but all their friends know where they’ll be. It could be any one of them. Just to be careful, Tyrell clicks off the lamp and curls up on the sofa. The darkness makes the room feel colder.

The door swings open.

“Hey.” The tension is evident in Simon’s voice.

“Hi.” Lise.

“What’s up?”

Tyrell tugs on the thread, feels impatience and dread.

“There’s… Dammit. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna. I’m… pregnant and I want the baby. I want to keep it and I want to raise it around my mom.”

In the pause that follows, Tyrell feels the snapping of the thread reverberate all through him.

“Alright,” Simon says finally, like it’s settled. There’s nothing left to tug on. “Alright, Lise.”

Tyrell wakes up.

Why the fuck is he hiding? Lise must know he’s here; he’s here every Friday night. _Fuck this._ Tyrell uncurls, creaks his way off the sofa, and strides into the hallway, grabbing his overnight bag and coat as he slips into his shoes and pushes past them, right out the door. He catches Lise’s eyes as he passes, huge and guilty and still somehow pleading for him to keep his mouth shut. He can’t let himself look back at Simon.

Tyrell stomps his way down Simon’s driveway and most of the way to the town centre before he heaves over, sobbing the kind of ugly cry he hasn’t let himself cry in six years. His entire future, wiped out by a fucking… parasite. Just like that.

Tyrell descends into the hysteria with relish, crying out the accumulated frustrations and indignities of the past six years. He can see it now, how he’d let Simon make Tyrell like him— simple. He’d wanted it simple, easy. As if he didn’t know life wasn’t like that.

He might’ve cried there all night— there was no way to get home, given that he’d been counting on sleeping at Simon’s and then going straight to a full day’s work at Beijer’s the next morning, and even if he could’ve contacted his father, there was no way he was sober enough to drive by this time— but then a light flickers its way into his blurry vision.

He recognizes the big white BMW— it’s the only one in town— but the driver still comes as some surprise.

“Good Christ, boy. You stop that whimpering and I’ll drive you home.”

Tyrell nods fervently, gasping and wiping frantically at his face as he climbs into the passenger side.

They drive in darkness and silence long enough for Tyrell to get himself under some semblance of control before Beijer speaks. “Now, I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into here, but I’ve been meaning to find some time to talk to you, so we might as well do this now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tyrell says, his voice piteous to his own ears. He can make out the familiar spindly trees as they turn around a bend. They’re not far from the farm now.

“You’re a smart boy. I expected you’ve figured out what my interest is with you. Who I am to you.”

Tyrell nods and then, unsure if Beijer can see him, says “Yes.”

“I never had any sons. She was my only child and she threw her goddamn life away on you and your father. I hated the both of you. So you working for me seemed like the perfect opportunity to get you under my thumb and then grind you down.”

Tyrell realizes with a tendril of unease that Beijer hasn’t once asked for or checked directions. He knew the way, even in the dark.

“Now you’ve made it clear you’re smart, but more than that, you’re sharp. I see some of my own teeth in you, and as I get older I find the thought of my line dying with me keeps me up at night. So I have a proposal for you.”

Tyrell thinks of his own line. They’d been as careful as two teenagers fumbling around in the dark could be, but it’s possible that Lise’s baby is his. Not that it matters,

The BMW eases to a stop at the turn onto the farm’s gravel drive way. Beijer turns the key and the lights inside blink off. They’re submerged in wild and distant darkness, inside and out.

“While I have no interest in claiming any son of your father’s as my grandson, I will make you the beneficiary of my will. You go off to university and work and after I die you get whatever I have left. Money, property, sell the garage and dealership if you want, I honestly don’t give a shit. It’s better than the fucking government getting the lot of it. You’ll live the kind of life your mother gave up and your father never even dreamed of.

Just like that, the light flickers on in Tyrell’s dreams. Maybe they were Simon’s dreams first, but he clearly wouldn’t have use for them anymore. Why shouldn’t Tyrell get at least one thing he wants?

“On one condition.”

Of course.

“When you go home now, it’s the last time you ever will. You go collect what you need, and come back into town with me tonight and find a room to rent. No goodbye to your father. You never speak to him or contact him in any way ever again. And everything will be yours.”

He thinks of his father, passed out from drink in his bed, of Tyrell’s bed and the rotting floorboards still beneath it, of his mother buried in the farthest corner of the farm with just a plywood cross to mark her grave. The yes, when it comes, is easy.

Creeping down the driveway in the dead of night, he feels like a prowler in the place he was born and raised. He passes the half-chopped pile of logs, his own neglected chore, and the small barn his father hasn’t finished repairing in nearly 18 years. It all feels distant and foreign to him already.

It’s easy enough to open the door to the farmhouse, to step in and find his way to his corner of the room in the dark. He doesn’t even need to be quiet; his father is snoring the deep sleep of the utterly passed out. His clothes, books, and few belongings gathered, Tyrell can’t resist pausing in front of his father’s bed.

When he looks into the sleeping face, the gaping mouth, he doesn’t see himself. His father’s brow is dark and heavy, his beard wild and unkempt, his gut stretching out against his faded shirt. If someone asked him now, Tyrell could say, with full sincerity, that he’s never seen this man before in his life. Easy.

_-_

**ZEUS** — _since 2007, when it infiltrated the US department of transportation, this Trojan horse malware has become the largest botnet on the Internet_

When the bolt of lightning strikes— _Coup de foudre_ —it’s not at first sight. The lovely dark head, bent over French coursework, and the pale arch of her neck are striking, as is the pink smear of her lips, but it isn’t until she looks up, until their eyes meet, that she is electrifying. That Tyrell is electrified.

Joanna Olafson has been assigned as his conversational partner and she has no business looking so put together in an 8 AM study session. Tyrell has grown accustomed to being slightly overdressed in most areas of his life— he’s well-aware that the team under him at work call him “Patrick Bateman” behind his back (he’ll have them all replaced by the end of the quarter)— but Joanna looks like she stepped out a _Vogue_ editorial, all sleek cream fabric and flared skirts. There’s money all over her, from her pearls to her blowout.

Tyrell’s mouth is watering before she speaks to him, and when she arranges for them to meet at a cafe near campus for a study session, he’s more nervous than he’s been in years— since his first day at E Corp.

He arrives early and takes a table near the window, his eyes flickering manically between his book and the Fyris, gleaming outside. He’s over-caffeinated by the time Joanna surprises him by manifesting out of thin air.

“What are you reading?” She asks in French as she slides into the seat opposite him. Tyrell struggles not to cringe, turning the cover of the first _Millennium_ book toward her wordlessly. He executes his favourite conversational move in any language: “And you?”

She taps a manicured finger against the cover of the book clasped in her hand, an English copy of _The Iliad_.

“I’ve heard of that one,” Joanna continues, undeterred. “ _Men Who Hate Women_.”

“It’s sort of a thought exercise for me,” Tyrell offers. “Really just dumb fun to see how inaccurate it is— nothing like a Greek classic.”

That’s mostly true, but there’s something else about it draws him in: the knowledge that a character like Salander is the hero of a best-selling book series comforts Tyrell so sincerely that it mortifies him.

“They’re not so different, are they? Hackers program malware to disguise itself as something harmless or desirable. It’s all Trojan horses, isn’t it?”

Her French is better than his, her pronunciation smoother and more confident.

Tyrell atemps another diversion: “You’re a Classics student?” 

Joanna allows it, if only briefly: “It’s my minor. I’ve got a year left on my Business major. I haven’t seen you around Uppsala before.”

“Just here to study over summer vacation, and then it’s back to Stockholm. I studied at KTH for my Bachelor’s but I’m at E Corp now.”

He never gets tired of saying it, though he’s at least managed to stop sounding audibly proud when he does.

Joanna doesn’t even blink. It’s possible she hasn’t blinked the entire time they’ve been talking. He can see the next question ramping up behind her eyes.

“Can I get you anything to drink— or eat?” Tyrell asks first, desperate.

“Not now, thank you.” How the hell is he supposed to make a good impression if she won’t let him pay attention to her? “But we can meet for dinner tomorrow.”

“Sure," he agrees dumbly. "I can practice again tomorrow.”

“Not practice. Dinner.”

Tyrell spends the next 30 hours teetering between terror and ecstasy. He finagles a reservation at the best restaurant in town, gets his hair cut and his best suit pressed, and pulls out her chair when they’re led to the table. Joanna is different in the evenings, her clothes darker, the wholesome pink of her lips etched out in deep red. She orders the wine, asks his opinion on the entrees, and then starts in with more questions.

“I’m interested in you,” she says in French. Maybe she means to say _you’re interesting_.“So you’ve finished your degree but you’re still studying?”

“Just taking a business class at University of Stockholm— and a couple language courses: French, of course, and English.”

His reading and comprehension are pretty much perfect by now, and his writing is strong too. It’s in speaking, trying to choose the right words and smooth down his accent, that he lacks confidence.

“Ah, that’s much smarter,” Joanna says in English, her red mouth curling up. Tyrell pauses, fork partway to his own mouth, confused. “English is a necessity for any executive at E Corp.”

“I don’t want—“ He’s forgetting himself. He hasn’t had much wine but it must be going straight to his head. Has he eaten today?“After graduating, what do you want?” He’s not saying that right, English blurring with French with Swedish.

Joanna spears a cherry tomato, bites it clean in half with palpable relish, smiles and says: “I want a partner”—in Danish, Tyrell realizes belatedly. “Someone who can meet me in the middle, where we can both push each other beyond what we thought ourselves capable of.”

Tyrell doesn’t speak a word of Danish, though it’s easy enough to understand.

Certain he’s blushing, he reverts to steadier ground. In Swedish: “I meant with your career. You’re studying business, yes?”

“Yes. But my father always says work smart, not hard. To make it as a female executive in a company like E Corp I would to have to debase myself in ways that will be out of my control. That is unacceptable to me. I want power without pain.”

That’s when the unreality of all of this hits Tyrell. When Joanna speaks, she sounds like a storybook, like something that couldn’t exist outside of the magical spires of Uppsala. He cannot imagine having this conversation in Gothenburg or Stockholm. There’s magic here.

“So what I truly want is someone who is capable of greatness, but who understands that he cannot achieve greatness without me.” She lays her fork down delicately. "I’ve seen that in you and I think you’ve seen that in yourself.”

Joanna reaches out one fine, cool hand and lays it over his overheated, clammy fist. Tyrell feels the shock of her touch all through him. “That’s what I want. But what I _need_ is someone who loves me more than anything in this world, who is willing to do anything to get me what I want, whatever it takes.”

“Anything,” Tyrell repeats fervently.

“Anything? You swear?”

“I swear.” His voice is a whisper even to his own ears.

Joanna’s eyes narrow as she studies him intently. He has no idea what she sees.

“You see those earrings,” Joanna inclines her elegant head to the left. “On the red-haired woman.”

Tyrell looks away from her for what feels like the first time all evening and sees the woman in question, curling red hair and a tight black dress, leaning against the bar like she’s there to be seen. The diamond studs in her ears glitter under the bar lighting. She’s beautiful but not in a way that holds attention— he looks back to Joanna and nods.

“I want them.”

“I’ll get you diamond earrings,” he promises emphatically.

“Not _diamond_ earrings. Those are fakes— cubic zirconia. I can tell from here.”

He can't keep up: “You want _fake_ diamonds?”

“I want _those_ fake diamonds. The ones in her ears right now. Would you get them for me?”

He feels 15, not 25. “If you want them, I would get them for you.”

“What what you do to get them?”

“Whatever it takes,” Tyrell says and knows it’s true. “I’ll offer to buy them off her, or steal them out of her ears, or—”

“I want you to fuck her and then bring me her earrings.”

Tyrell’s head is spinning.

“What?” He’s sure this is a test, but he’s not sure how to pass it. Refusing to touch another woman seems like a safe bet, but—

“That’s what it takes, Tyrell. Are you willing to do what’s necessary?”

There’s nothing safe about Joanna Olafson.

Tyrell leaves his credit card on the table and walks unsteadily over to the redhead. She gives him her name (he doesn’t remember), he gives her a false name (Mikael is the first thing that comes to mind). He buys her a drink and asks her questions about herself. When he first kisses her neck, he looks over to the table and sees Joanna looking straight back at him, the candlelight burning bright in her eyes.

That’s what he thinks of, as he’s kissing the redhead’s mouth, fucking her mechanically, holding her while he waits for her to fall asleep, swiping the earrings off her bedside table, slipping silently out her front door into the night: the fire in Joanna’s eyes.

He can’t sleep when he gets back his flat, sick with the thought that he may have miscalculated.

What if Joanna was playing with him? What if she’s disgusted by what he did?

The earrings are burning a hole in his pocket— demanding to be delivered to their new owner. But Tyrell doesn’t have Joanna’s phone number— his only way to contact her is to hope she’ll show up for class on Monday morning, but he can’t bear the thought of waiting that long. What he does have is her name, the school she attends, her country of origin. That’s more than enough for him to go on and he’s hacked her before the sun rises: her school records, her MySpace, her browser history all splayed out before him. Her address is just a bonus.

The morning air is still crisp when she opens her front door to find Tyrell on her front step, his open hand outstretched and the cubic zirconia earrings gleaming in the first light of dawn. She’s wearing a silk nightgown and her hair is mussed just a little, but it’s nothing compared to the bags under Tyrell’s eyes or the rumpled suit he’s still wearing.

When Joanna takes the earrings, she grins so widely that she looks for the first time, like a university student of her age. When she draws him inside and kisses him, it’s filthy and romantic all at once.

“You liked it, didn’t you? What I did to you,” Joanna asks him as they lie curled together in bed. It’s well into the afternoon now. He hasn’t lazed about like this on a Saturday morning in— ever.

Tyrell’s throat is still aching, but the pull to answer her honestly is irresistible. “Yes, very much.”

“Would you do that to me?” Joanna’s nails are scratching gently against his scalp. He’s twirling a piece of her dark hair around his finger, pulling it tight enough that the tip of his index finger swells purple with blood.

“I couldn’t! I couldn’t—” _Hurt you like that_ , he doesn’t say. It would sound wrong that way, like he hadn’t really liked what Joanna had done— the suffocating squeeze of her hands around his neck keeping him tethered to his body as she let him slip blissfully up and away.

He’d wept as she did it, and after he’d come, when she let go, he’d rasped a helpless “I love you”— mortifying after a first time, a mistake he hadn’t made since Simon— but Joanna hadn’t minded. She’d smiled and stroked his wet face and said “I’ll love you too, soon enough.”

Undeterred, Joanna continues: “Would you do it to me if I asked?”

Tyrell knows there’s only one right answer here, even if the thought of binding Joanna’s wrists to her headboard, as his had been, of hitting her with the open palm of his hand, as she had struck him, turns his stomach.

“Yes,” Tyrell says finally, if a little unsteadily. He can’t still be drunk, but he feels that way.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Joanna says, her voice light, but it doesn’t sound like she’s joking. More like the mere thought of it has pleased her.

Tyrell sighs and curls tighter around her. “It’s hard to believe this is all real. Meeting you like this— it feels like luck. Or fate.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Joanna says firmly.

“And fate?”

“In Greek mythology, destiny is embodied by the Moirai: the three Fates. Some classicists believe that even Zeus had to submit to the Moirai. Not even the god of all gods was immune to fate.” The earrings twinkle in her ears. “Do you want to know your fate, Tyrell?”

“Our fate,” Tyrell can’t resist saying. He’s only known her two days, but she doesn’t flinch.

“Yes,” Joanna smiles again, her eyes soft and warm. Like candlelight. “I will finish my bachelor’s and then we will get married. You will study English and make your way as far up the food chain as you can in E Corp Sweden and then you will get into an MBA program in America and when you transfer to the E Corp office in New York, I will join you there. We’ll have two children: first a boy and then a girl. Within 10 years, you will become the youngest CTO in E Corp history and within 20, the youngest CEO.

Tyrell sees it all unspool before them as Joanna speaks. The inevitability of it comforts him, grounds him, like her hands around his neck. There’s no doubt in his mind— this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Lightning doesn’t strike twice.

_-_

**FLAME** — _identified in 2012, this sophisticated malware, used by US intelligence for targeted cyber espionage, supports a “kill” command which wipes all traces of it_

He’s just turned 30— older now than his mother ever was— when he gets the call.

He rode the train from Philadelphia last week to meet Terry Colby, the current CTO. It had been a short trip— he’d known the thing to do after being wined and dined was to go out and mess around, but overwhelmed by choice in New York City, he’d instead taken the first train back after the meeting, pressing his forehead against the cool window of the train car.

Colby was crass and brutish, but he’d said begrudgingly complimentary things about Tyrell’s work in Stockholm and Tyrell knew it would be hard to dismiss his performance at Wharton. It probably hadn’t hurt that Tyrell had blackmailed one of the other candidates and framed the third for embezzlement.

So when the message that he’s been promoted to VP of Technology— transfer to New York office effective ASAP— Tyrell’s first reaction isn’t quite surprise.

He doesn’t wait a second before calling Joanna. It’s dinnertime in Sweden and the slight crackle of distance over the phone gives a sense of historical significance to the news when he shares it.

“That’s wonderful, Tyrell,” Joanna says, her voice rich with satisfaction. “You’ll come home to settle your affairs and then we’ll move together.”

“My affairs?” He’s happy to go back to Stockholm and make the trip to New York with her. He’s been away from Joanna for too long— it unsettles him to be so lonely. But he’ll paying the bank loans he’s taken out to pay for his MBA for at least a decade— he has no other affairs to settle.

“There’s something I’ve been waiting to tell you. I didn’t want you to be distracted from school or work. You received a letter from a man named Beijer.”

Tyrell hasn’t had a word from Beijer since he’d left town for his Bachelor’s, though apparently he’d given Tyrell a glowing review back when E Corp had called to confirm his references. It was more than his father had ever done for him.

“You opened it?"

Joanna doesn’t dignify that with a response. He knows as well as she does that they can’t keep secrets if they’re going to achieve all they have planned. “He’s dead, and he left you… some money, a garage, and a car dealership.” The question is unspoken. Answering it requires Tyrell to speak over the storm battering its way up his throat into the space between his ears.

“My grandfather,” he manages, voice thick.

Joanna knows what that means, as she’d known what it meant when there’d been no family on his guest list for their wedding, but she glides right over it, as she’d smoothed over whatever questions her parents had about Tyrell’s family.

“I had our accountant look into it. If we sell both the businesses and the inventory, the profits along with the money you’re inheriting will be enough to pay off your loans, even get a nice place in one of the better boroughs. But you need to go home to sign the papers.”

His head is still too noisy— none of his own thoughts are sticking in it— but Joanna’s instructions slice through it all. He misses her with a physical ache in that moment.“Alright, I’ll get the first flight back to Stockholm.”

“Not Stockholm. Götaland.” This shouldn’t be more a blow than the news about Beijer but it is— back to Götaland. The phone crackles like Joanna’s taking a breath. “I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m so proud of you, my love,” she says before she hangs up. It takes Tyrell a moment to remember why.

Joanna meets him at the airport, kissing him sweetly on both cheeks and looping her arm through his as they make their way to the hotel. She doesn’t embrace him until he’s standing, airport-stale in his sock feet, in the centre of the best hotel room in Gothenburg, as if she knew how he’d collapse when she finally hugged him, enfolding him in the familiar sweetness of her perfume. And he does. Of course, he does.

She stays back at the hotel when he hires the car to take him home. He doesn’t ask her to come and she doesn’t offer.

The drive is beautiful, all blue sky reflected in sparkling water and tree-lined roads.

Tyrell only survives it by thinking about New York. His new position there, the home they’ll buy. He should’ve spent more time at bars and restaurants there so he’d know the right places to take Joanna, where they should be seen to establish themselves. But Tyrell’s a fast learner.

He arrives to a ghost town— no cars on the road, no one on the sidewalk or visible in the rundown shops— which really just means it’s just before 11 AM on a weekday. Everyone’s at work, or school, or home with their babies.

On the way to the bank, he passes the garage and the dealership, both shuttered, and the cafe where he used to take his dates, and then Lise, hours spent listening to her talk about the ways that Simon was disappointing her. The cafe looks impossibly small. Lise and Simon’s baby would be 10 or 11 by now. That thought is enough to kill any mild impulse to stop in for a coffee in his collared shirt, his pressed slacks. He looks out of place for a summer in town, but of course, that’s the point.

His knuckles are white on the wheel as he eases the rented SUV in front of the bank, where he transfers his old savings account to his E Corp bank account in the States. The amount, which had seem so mammoth to him at the time, is laughable now, even with more than a decade of growth.

He preens a little under the wondering eyes of the bank teller. She doesn’t look much older than him; could even be a poorly preserved old classmate of his. If she was, he can’t recognize her now. He’d hard be hard-pressed to recognize himself too, well-dressed and groomed, perfect posture and $300 shoes where he’d once been slouching in a hoodie and oversized work boots.

Thus bolstered, he heads out of the bank into the rising heat of a Götaland summer. The lawyer’s office is just up the hill, walking distance from Simon’s parents house, from where Beijer found him in the dark almost 12 years ago. Tyrell drives.

Beijer’s lawyer’s office is nothing like Beijer’s own, cramped and overflowing with stacks of unfiled papers, a jacket tossed over the chair next to Tyrell’s. He’s efficient, at least, giving Tyrell a quick rundown of the mechanism of the inheritance and indicating where he should sign. The whole process doesn’t take more than a half an hour, Tyrell half expecting Beijer’s stern face to appear suddenly behind him, to reveal that he wasn’t really Tyrell’s mother’s father and that this was all one long scheme to test Tyrell’s mettle. 

With a satisfied sigh, the lawyer shuts his Beijer folder, an early lunch already shining in his eyes, but Tyrell just can’t help himself. He blurts: “Is there anything else… he left for me? A note or… a message?”

The question is pitiful to his own ears and the look of sympathy that crosses the lawyer’s face as he shakes his head is worse than any conciliatory response he could offer.

Tyrell feels the urge to slap him clean across the face, leave a bright red handprint over his rounded cheeks. Hard enough that chewing hurts. Hard enough to ruin his lunch.

Instead, he forces a shrug and one of his more polite smiles, feeling it tremble around the edges, and drifts out into the relative safety of the SUV. There’s a scream vibrating at the back of his throat, but if he lets it out he might never stop. The lawyer might return from lunch and find Tyrell still screaming in a borrowed car.

So he turns on the engine, looks both ways. If he drives up, past Simon’s house, the road will take him straight through town and toward the highway back to Gothenburg. He’ll be back to Joanna before dinner, find her waiting in the hotel room in a new dress, with a new watch or belt for him. She’ll have chosen the best place in town for them to eat and will let him hold her hand across the table if he needs to.

He needs to.

Except. The car is down the hill and out of town before he’s even conscious of making the decision. By the time he’s turning the final bend before the farm, he’s sick with mortification.

What had he expected? To feel like he imagined Beijer felt, smug and powerful in his giant, expensive car approaching the rundown road to his father’s farm? To get some satisfaction from defying Beijer’s last request, his final victory over the man who Beijer had abandoned his daughter to?

The only thing he feels as he rolls to the stop at the end of his father’s long driveway, in front of the “For Sale By Owner” sign, is a dull sinking. For one wild moment, he imagines himself striding down the road and onto the farm in his shiny shoes, his designer city clothes, with a briefcase full of cash to buy the farm.

His father might not recognize him, the thought of which hurt with a clean sting that was almost indistinguishable from pleasure. Even if his father did recognize him, Tyrell could insist he was a stranger, had never seen the farm before in his life. His father wouldn’t be able to say no, he’d need the money so badly. Tyrell could tear everything down or leave it to rot. Either way, it would be his to decide, his father slinking away to drink himself into oblivion with Beijer’s money.

But he couldn’t do it, of course. Not because of any promise he’d made to Beijer as a child: Joanna had a vision for what do with this money that would bringer them closer than ever to their fate and Tyrell farther and farther from this godforsaken farm. She’d spent years helping him stay on track and he couldn’t let himself get drawn back into the frozen mud of Götaland by his father and Beijer, just then they were finally about to leave it all behind for good.

Joanna would never forgive him— and he’d never forgive himself, of course.

It would have to be enough, knowing his father was likely slumped over his battered kitchen table a kilometre away, praying for someone like Tyrell come by and offer him a lifeline.

In the end, he didn’t need to spend a dime to leave it all to rot.

Taking the long way back to Gothenburg means he doesn’t need to drive back through the town. His phone buzzes in his pocket as the SUV coasts over a hill— cell service is back.

Joanna had texted him two hours ago, a simple: “All settled?” He should try to call but— service might still be too weak. Better to text back than to wait for better service to call.

The text is elegant in its understatement, but Joanna will know what he means: _I’m done here. Wouldn’t you rather sleep in your apartment tonight?_

Joanna would. They take the last train back to Stockholm and while Tyrell can’t press his forehead to the cool window of the first class car without disturbing Joanna, asleep against his shoulder, he can use his phone to find the right restaurants, the best antique stores, the most exclusive tailor, a flower shop that will deliver fresh lilies whenever she wants them in New York City.

The signal’s strong enough now.

_-_

**LINUX.DARLLOZ** — _discovered in 2013, Linux.Darlloz is a worm which exploits a vulnerability to infect Linux embedded systems_

Terry Colby is becoming a problem.

It’s not news to Tyrell that he’s a moron— he’d clocked that from the first, painful conversation they’d had in a Manhattan steakhouse— or that his vices are as despicable as they are numerous— he was abominably easy to hack for the Chief Technology Officer of the largest corporation in the Western world— or even that he’s a full-on criminal— the dirty details of the Washington Township debacle were hardly challenging to uncover once he had network permissions— but like any cockroach infesting the body of a schlubby boomer, Colby’s proven almost impossible to pin down. And the clock keeps ticking.

Colby likes him, as much as he likes anybody— which means very little, but still puts Tyrell leagues above the absolute indifference or open derision most of the other guys at E Corp are granted.

While that’s in no small part because Tyrell had quickly made himself an indispensable stopgap to cover Colby’s technical shortcomings and utter lack of work ethic, he’d also invested no small amount of effort into adapting to the crass rhythms of the way that Colby and his men communicate.

The mannerisms and posturing this had first required are now nearly reflex: Tyrell’s smiles are wide, but condescending enough to be blatantly insincere. His handshakes are brief and painfully tight. In chairs, he sits back with legs spread wide. His snide comments are tossed with the ease and boredom of a country club tennis serve— when they’re lobbed back at him, Tyrell can laugh along without flinching. When Tyrell talks about himself, he’s heartless, soulless, shameless, a snake, a shark, a wolf, his tone smug enough to make it clear that he relishes these characteristics in himself and others.

This is how Tyrell’s made it to Senior VP in less than a year. Whether Colby hadn’t thought or hadn’t cared to wonder why Evans, Tyrell’s predecessor, would request a transfer to the New Mexico office— effectively a demotion— he’d promoted Tyrell into the open position without blinking.

It’s also why he’s wasting his afternoon crammed in the back of a town car with Colby and the _CEO of E Corp_ , headed to a look-see at some smalltime cybersecurity firm.

Tyrell had done the requisite research, knowing Colby couldn’t be bothered, supplemented by some extracurricular digging of his own, and he could run better cybersecurity in his sleep.

He’d already proposed an in-house team to Colby when he’d been named Senior VP, assuring him that any extra responsibilities would be Tyrell’s alone, even making clear Colby could take credit for the idea if it worked, and blame Tyrell if it didn’t.

Colby lacks vision.

The summary profile Tyrell presented to Colby made it all perfectly clear: Allsafe Cybersecurity’s CEO Gideon Goddard is all bleeding heart and no business sense. He went to a state school, he overpays his employees, and at the rate things are going, AllSafe’s maximum shelf life was 2018.

So, of course, Colby’s spent the entire car ride harping on about the fact that Goddard is married to a man 15 years younger than him.

The flurry of slurs and expletives were apparently just a warm-up. Colby’s in full swing now: “Maybe if he spent less money on his rent boy, and more on decent engineers, he wouldn’t need a bailout from us to keep his company afloat.”

As if Colby isn’t too stupid to question why— or even notice that— his Senior VP of Technology is still running Linux.

“Imagine inviting this guy to the Christmas party? I wouldn’t want him around _my_ son.”

Never mind that Colby’s third wife is a year older than his son.

Tyrell forcibly relaxes his jaw— his indulgent grin is beginning to ache around the edges— and lets himself tune Colby out.

The one promising part of this outing had been close-quarters facetime with Price. Joanna had painstakingly selected his tie that morning with this chance to make an impression in mind. But Price’s mind has clearly been elsewhere the entire time, not even gracing Colby’s tirade with the cursory, humouring comments Tyrell is managing, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance outside his tinted window.

But there’s still something to learn from being in an enclosed space with him, at least.

There’s a gravity around Price. It’s easy to get drawn in, but a single gesture or expression can send you spiralling back out just as easily. It’s power, yes, but nothing so simple as being the CEO of the largest multinational conglomerate in the world. There’s something greater at work.

Tyrell’s never met someone so unburdened by other people’s expectations. Nothing touches him. There’s this sense that E Corp could collapse from the top down and Price would still be standing in the rubble, unscathed. Nothing to prove.

He makes Beijer, who emanated the kind of authority that would’ve been more at home in a garrison state, seem performative, even boastful. Price isn’t quick to anger or demonstrations of power. Tyrell’s only seen it once or twice, the sudden unhinging of jaw, the baring of the great white’s teeth and, when just enough blood has been drawn, the quick retraction.

Colby’s an attack dog, a ravager. Sloppy.

Price might not show it, but this repulses him as much as he permits its usefulness. When Tyrell gets the chance to bare his own teeth, he’ll retract them just as quickly.

The attack dog has outlived his usefulness— all Tyrell needs is an opportunity.

_-_

**QWERTY** — _as revealed through Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2014, this sophisticated malware also known as Regin was used by the NSA and GSHQ to illegally monitor Windows users_

Below him, New York is waking up. The city’s never more alive than it is at night.

Even this high up, the late May air retains some of its sleepy warmth, though undercut with a sharp coolness that keeps Tyrell from ever relaxing properly.

Nothing makes him more tired than the parties.

By any standard, this Memorial Day party is one of the better ones: Price had summoned Tyrell— and Joanna, on his arm— over to meet personal friends of his, tone rich with doting condescension as he introduced Tyrell like a favoured pupil. Tyrell had preened painstakingly under Price’s attention, counting the seconds until he could drift back over to the edge of the balcony, and peer into the darkening city below.

It does feel good, at least, to know he’s successfully disguising his covetousness as admiration. Plus, Colby’s not around, for once.

Tyrell knows he cuts a striking figure, body louche in his light, impeccably tailored suit as he leans against the railing, but it’s not enough to just be seen. No, Tyrell has to perform.

First for Price, then for the other executives, and now for some potential recruit that Price— and Joanna— made clear he’s expected to reel in.

Price’s personal cybersecurity is impressively robust; Tyrell has had to resort to hacking Price’s secretary’s computer for most of his intel. Price wants IBM’s latest acquisitions rock star as some sort of reward for a shadowy favour Susan Jacobs has done him.

Joanna says he needs a friend who is a peer. Lucille “Lucky” Polastri is three years older than Tyrell, raised in a globe-trotting series of international schools, a chronic insomniac, recently single, as lonely in Silicon Valley as she’ll be in New York. He can only assume the nickname is ironic.

But that’s the trick of it, isn’t it? Tyrell has no peers. He’s the youngest executive in the New York offices, by at least a decade. He and Joanna have couple friends, of course— primarily due to Joanna’s careful efforts. They go out for double dates or host dinner parties with husbands and wives in their late 40s. Tyrell can get drinks or play squash with the husbands while Joanna shops or brunches with the wives, but it’s torture, having to carry on at home as he does at work. What he wouldn’t give to have a conversation with someone who gets how fucked it is that Regin was developed by the NSA.

Barring that, what he wouldn’t give to be left alone.

If he were Price, no one would dare interrupt his silent contemplation. His desire to be left alone would generate an impenetrable force field around him. But he isn’t, and so the familiar click of Joanna’s white Louboutins announces her approach.

“There you are, darling.” Joanna’s voice is soft and light, but her eyes are hard— they both know he’s disappointed her, neglecting his duties by hiding outside instead of mingling as planned.

Her hand is curled around the bent elbow of a tall young woman sporting a pinched expression and ill-fitting cream dress. Hardly a rock star.

“I was on my way out when I ran into the lovely Lucille, hiding out by coatcheck. I remembered Phillip saying he thought the two of you would hit it off and I couldn’t head home until I was sure you were both in safe hands.”

When Lucky doesn’t respond, Tyrell slips his sharkskin on, initiating the kind of handshake that says _I don’t care that you’re a woman as long as you can deliver results_. “Pleasure to meet you, Lucille. Tyrell Wellick.”

Lucky’s hands are cold, a little damp. “You can call me Lucky,” she mumbles. “Everybody does.”

“If you prefer Lucky, then so do I.” Tyrell twists the curling of his lip into a bashful smile. Lucky’s mouth twitches up slightly: an incremental response.

Joanna turns to her conspiratorially: “Didn’t I tell you he’d be hiding out, too? What a pair you make!”

They all laugh politely and sip their flutes of champagne. Lucky loosens up another few increments.

Joanna yawns daintily, hiding it behind her manicured fingers. “I could drop off right here, I’m so tired.”

Tyrell can’t resist an attempt, futile as it may be: “Ah! Shall I take you home?”

The fairy lights, strung up to hold off the rising dark, catch on Joanna’s earrings, the shine of her eyes. Tyrell could curl upside it and sleep for years. 

“No, no, I’ve already called a car, and we both know I’ll fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. You’ll be up for hours still—“ She turns from him to Lucky, dropping an air kiss against her cheek: “An incorrigible night owl, this one.”

Lucky nods sympathetically, her allegiance shifting further as Joanna drops her hand from her elbow and leans in toward Tyrell, who stiffens in faux surprise.

“I’ll be waiting up,” Joanna says as she carefully presses a polite kiss to his cheek. As it always does when they’re in public, the Danish slips through his language filter on a delay.

“Have fun, you two!” She coos in English. By the time he’s processed her words, she’s slipping back into and through the party without a backwards glance.

Resigned, Tyrell slips his hands into his pockets, his whole body leaning toward Lucky like he’s on a leash and Lucky’s pulling it. He tilts his head, exposing his neck, and grins sideways at her, bracing himself to reach out and a lay a hand on her bare shoulder. In case she hasn’t gotten the message by now.

“In that case, I guess we’re hiding out together.”

In a 4-star hotel room, Tyrell sits motionless, staring out the window at the throb of city lights as he waits for E Corp’s newest acquisition to drift off. Once Tyrell is sure Lucky’s properly asleep, he can plant the rootkit on her phone and have a direct line to any major movements Legal might be making. He will keep up a friendly email correspondence with her until the contracts are finalized and she’s well and truly gobbled up by Susan Jacobs’ extraordinary machine. Two birds, one stone. 

By the time Lucky wakes up, Tyrell will be in bed with his wife. They will never speak in private again.

_(In a locked server room in Manhattan, Elliot Alderson falls asleep. Someone else awakens.)_

_-_

**GAMEOVER ZEUS** — _first coming to prominence in 2014, this Russian-built peer-to-peer botnet connects infected computers to command & control servers in order to steal banking credentials_

His footsteps echo through Times Square. The city is nearly silent, so still it might have been emptied by some great plague or mass exodus. Manhattan at its best: devoid of bodies, still clinging to sleep as the sun begins its uneasy arc into the sky, Tyrell following it on foot.

Sutherland doesn’t like it, Tyrell running downtown without eyes on him, but he’s too good at his job to really be great at his job; he never forgets where the money comes from. Or who tidied up his credit history from the inside.

These are the cleanest minutes of Tyrell’s day. The act of running is efficient enough, his mind free to drift off as it pleases, leading him into a blissful absence of self he associates with an especially absorbing hack. Freedom.

Without fail, he’s back at the townhouse by 6 AM, short of breath and overloaded with endorphins, with just enough time for the rest of his morning routine. He’s been an early riser his whole life, but Joanna will be just finishing her shower now, the windows still coated in steam as Tyrell steps out of his running gear.

But not today.

Joanna, who by now should be sitting at her vanity in her bathroom, meticulously blowdrying her hair, is waiting at the kitchen table. She looks like she’s been up for hours, though she was fast asleep when Tyrell slipped out of their bedroom an hour ago. The table is laden with breakfast foods: fresh fruits, brioche bread, even waffles.

Tyrell runs a quick tally: it isn’t any version of their anniversary (first date, first time Joanna said “I love you,” wedding), it isn’t a holiday, and it isn’t one of their birthdays.

“Morning, my love,” Joanna says, her voice pitched low enough that he’s drawn into the kitchen to better hear her.

She tilts her cheek up to be kissed as he approaches, despite the sweat and grime of the city he’s trailing with him. Tyrell obliges, even as his stomach drops to the soles of his feet.

“Have a seat.” Tyrell sways where he stands, marble floor cool through his socks. Joanna’s smile is indulgent. “It’s nothing bad, I swear.”

He sits, whatever endorphins his run had generated overwhelmed by sudden adrenaline as Joanna hands him a blank envelope, the paper thick and rich as it slides into his sticky hands.

“What is this?” His voice sounds shivery to his own ears.

“Open it."

He does. Uses the butter knife from his place setting to slice open the envelope, unfolds the much cheaper printer paper within. Everything in him stills, stops.

He can see Joanna out of the corner of his eye, waiting patiently. He keeps his eyes fixed on the paper. When he finishes reading, he has to react.

He knows it’s been too long when Joanna starts speaking, her voice impossibly gentle. “I know this is a little scary. I was frightened too at first. But it’s all part of the plan we mapped out. This couldn’t come at a better time.”

There’s something he’s meant to say, a way he’s meant to react. He should know what to do, even if he can’t make himself do it, but his mind has blanked with panic.

Joanna continues. “I waited to tell you until we were sure. I’m far enough along now that it’s safe to tell people.” She reaches out, puts one of her small, neat hands on his fist where it’s clenched, wrinkling the OB-GYN’s report. “Tyrell, you’re going to be a father.”

He has to speak. If he doesn’t, he’ll scream and ruin this beautiful breakfast Joanna arranged for them to celebrate. The smell of bacon has his stomach roiling. _Just say something._

“I need to shower,” is what he says.

His chair clatters behind him as he flees up the stairs and into the bathroom.

The panic, when it inevitably comes, is drowned out by the roar of the shower, the gasping sound of his sobs hidden beneath the falling water.

The ringing in his head crystallizes into a single sound— _So much depends upon_ — that goddamn poem his father loved so much. He’d recite it as he chopped wood, so rhythmically that it removed meaning from sound, some secular chant in a language he didn’t speak. The only time Tyrell had paid for a paper in school, it had been for a poetry assignment on William Carlos Williams. He’s worked so hard to forget, it’s unfair that it would come back to him now.

Tyrell knows what he has to do: be a man, support his family, provide, protect. But hasn’t he be doing that for years now? Aren’t they already a family? Aren’t their lives rich enough with love and shared purpose?

Even if all the planning and pretending gets heavy sometimes, Tyrell’s under no illusions that anyone besides Joanna would put up with his mood swings, his panics and rages, without fear— without so much as blinking an eye. She trusts him not to hurt her, to calm down given enough space and time, that the right words can snap him out of it if necessary.

It shouldn’t even come as a surprise, given that Joanna has spent the last few months mentioning her ovulation cycle. This has always been part of their roadmap: Joanna gets pregnant before Tyrell makes CTO so they have time to adjust to being parents before he takes on new responsibility. By the time he is E Corp’s CEO, they have three children with Joanna’s features and Tyrell’s eyes. Tyrell’s on board.

But a baby— a helpless thing that needs constant caring and comfort and attention? What is he meant to do with that?

The water’s run cold by the time he gets up to turn the shower off. Tyrell’s face, when he studies it in the bathroom mirror, is swollen and pinked.

Joanna’s sitting primly on their impeccably made bed when he emerges from the bathroom, her legs crossed one over the other, her hands stacked on her knee.

The message is clear: she’s given him enough time.

She extends a hand and Tyrell reaches out to hold it. She squeezes his fingers as she speaks, her other hand going to cup her stomach.

“My love, I know why this is hard for you. But we’ll be ready for our baby. Have you ever seen me ill-prepared for anything?” Tyrell shakes his head honestly. “And you— are so much stronger than your father could have dreamed of being. Our baby will have the most loving, attentive parents imaginable. Our baby will do great things. This is your legacy.”

The words come to him now: “I’m sorry. This is wonderful.” The grin stretches his face out. To cover it, he leans in and kisses Joanna properly on the mouth, then the forehead. “Our baby.”

He’s releasing Joanna before she can study his expression too closely, revving into a flurry of motion that carries him to the closet and then out the door in less than 20 minutes. When he passes Joanna on his way down the stairs with a “We’ll celebrate tonight!” she makes a shushing gesture— she’s on the phone with her family back home, delivering the good news. Without him.

In the muted dim of the SUV, Tyrell’s voice sounds commanding. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Have an enormous bouquet of lilies delivered to Joanna after you drop me at the office. From the place she likes.” Sutherland nods absently, his turn onto 3rd Avenue seamless even in morning traffic. “And I need you to get me someone.”

“Someone?” Sutherland echoes when Tyrell doesn’t continue. He’s been trying to figure out how to sort this for a while, but now he has no choice: he must act. With a baby to take care of, Joanna won’t have time to talk him down. And he can’t disrupt them with any shouting or— or take his anger out on the baby. The thought guts him.

“Someone discrete. Who’s willing to suffer for a bit of money. I don’t care how much, but I need someone by lunchtime today. I’ll meet them somewhere secluded so our business won’t be interrupted.”

Sutherland’s only reaction is a slow nod and a “Yes, sir.”

Tyrell has to handle things on his own now. Be a man for Joanna. For the baby.

“And pick up some latex gloves while you’re at it.”

_-_

**BASHLITE** — _leaked in 2015, this malware infects Linux systems in order to launch DDOS attacks_

The sleek steel walls of the elevator shudder as it rises in near-silence. Tyrell’s shoulders droop minutely, his hand drifting compulsively to the knot in his tie, whether to loosen or tighten it doesn’t matter, because he catches himself each time.

This is the first moment Tyrell’s been alone all day, but still— there’s the elevator security camera trained unblinking on him.

He’s ready to shiver out of his skin by the time he’s stepping out of the car and into the lobby, shoulders back, stance casual as he steps briskly through security, out the door, and around the block. By all rights he should be exhausted, but his adrenaline’s still high. His phone, buzzing insistently even now through the pocket of his slacks, has been ringing non-stop since before the sun rose.

Terry Colby, implicated in the DDOS attack. Terry Colby, arrested by the FBI.

As Elizabeth hung up on her end, the truth struck Tyrell in the space between heartbeats. _Coup de foudre._

But there had been no time to acknowledge it all day, no room to let it travel through him and settle in his bones like surety. Price had booked a meeting with him, but first Tyrell had to spend the morning putting out fires: consulting Legal, reassuring shareholders, impeding FBI inquiries.

Any spare second was spent preparing the proposal he wanted to bring before Price, though when he was finally let into Price’s office in the afternoon, it became clear no pitch was required. Price didn’t bother getting up from behind his desk when he made the announcement: Interim CTO. Tyrell was getting the carrot while Colby was getting beaten to death with the stick.

It’s rare a thing to truly catch Tyrell off guard. Careful preparation and relentless persistence have prepared him for most eventualities.

Which is why he’d run a cursory security check Elliot Alderson, as he did on all new Allsafe employees. Nothing about this one had been worth his time or attention: a couple of certifications, a degree from a community college, immigrant mother, a dead father who worked as an engineer for E Corp. Probably went into the business to feel closer to him. Pathetic.

Though he’d known the name, even the face, for a couple months, it was Gnome running on a terminal that had caught his eye as Goddard led them on a redundant tour of their microscopic office. Tyrell was confident this was the last time he’d step foot in Allsafe’s cramped offices. After the latest RUDY attack, keeping Allsafe on as cybersecurity for another quarter was indefensible. Whatever soft spot Price had for the company couldn’t outweigh shareholder expectations of data security. Things were coming together.

So he could tell himself it was recognizing a fellow hacker that had induced a sudden flash of kinship, the impulse to introduce himself and extend a hand, but that couldn’t explain the jolt that went through him. The reluctant introduction and brief handshake he received in return had set his pulse pounding.

The interaction had lasted less than a minute, banal in substance— the sort of patter Tyrell employed with potential clients and promising recruits. Elliot had barely participated. He’d just looked at Tyrell, eyes limpid and big as saucers, so internal he was almost absent, nervous but not afraid, curious but not impressed. Tyrell, mind whirling, had chattered on with false humility about Linux until Elliot really _looked_ at him for the first time. As he did, something wound its way through Tyrell, burrowed into his core. Made him say things, promise things. Linger.

He pauses outside the front doors of the second building. E Corp has a floor rented year-round for just the sort of thing he’s planning now, but he’s not foolish to make private calls there. Instead, he stands in the faint shadow of the building, his hair ruffling a little in the early spring wind.

Joanna picks up on the first ring, her “Hello” rich with pride and satisfaction. He doesn’t have to say a thing to her— he laughs giddily into the phone and swears he can hear her smile on the other end.

“It’s not done yet,” Joanna reminds him then, her voice soft and warm. “But we must celebrate. I’ve made dinner reservations— just the two of us.”

Tyrell winces. “Tonight…” He’d had something different in mind for the evening— something he hasn’t even articulated to himself. “There’s a lot to take care of. I’ll likely be stuck here late.”

“Of course. I made late reservations— 9:30 at Gaspar’s.”

“Great,” Tyrell says, hoping the wind will hide the tremor in his voice. But hiding from Joanna is hard, unless it’s something she doesn’t want to see.

“If you do have to stay later, you can let me know, of course. We can celebrate at home any time. We can’t lose sight of what’s important here.”

The truth, of course, is that it wasn’t Gnome or a background check that had compelled Tyrell to linger at Elliot’s station that first day.

It was the way the shoulders had tightened on the approach, sharp enough to cut even through the dress and undershirt, like he was sensing danger. When he’d half turned in his seat, it wasn’t fear that showed on his face, but barely concealed rage. He’d glared so hotly and openly at Colby, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that he was being trotted out like a show pony and that someone watching him trot might notice and take issue. He watched with the confidence of someone who was certain they were unobserved.

There’s a delicate alchemy to looking like Tyrell Wellick: his suits, expression, manner carefully calibrated so you might never pick him out of a line-up of men like him. If Tyrell wants you to look closer, however, you begin to notice that his clothes are better fitted, his smile more magnetic, his gaze intent enough to make you feel that you’re the only person who matters. There are no men like him, except—

No matter how Tyrell shifted his posture or turned his head to display the precise lines of his profile, Elliot Alderson’s furious gaze stayed locked firmly on Colby.

Tyrell knew that anger intimately. It had lived deep in his marrow for almost as long as he could remember. But that arrogant surety that he could watch without being watched in return, could see into others without having to hide himself, was utterly at odds with everything Tyrell thought he knew about Elliot Alderson.

Tyrell had tried to walk by with the others, but he’d felt his body slow, like trying to run in a dream. His eyes had caught Gnome running on his terminal, a gift in the form of plausible deniability.

But whatever he might have felt then, he’d been able to put it away. He had greater concerns: Colby— the last obstacle before the final obstacle. And he hadn’t even begun a plan for dealing with Price yet.

No time to be distracted by someone he’ll never see again.

Just three weeks later, a variation of what had been festering in his brain ever since: the wrinkled dress shirt, the hunch to his shoulders, the glassy expression. Tyrell had worked at keeping his own eyes on his paper, only allowing himself to watch Elliot in the flickers of light between blinks. Despite his transparent nervousness, Elliot evokes the same prey-instinct watchfulness in Tyrell as Price.

It’s just good sense with Price; keeping him in sight is the only way to prevent a surprise attack. But he couldn’t explain it, how Elliot pulls Tyrell’s attention despite— because of?— how hard he works to avoid it.

Here again, he’d seen it: the nervous shuffling of folders, the slight narrowing of his eyes at Colby’s posturing. Then: a shift, something sliding over and through Elliot as Goddard takes Moss out of the conference room, his posture straightening, the sudden, cocky jut of his jaw.

What threat could there have been in a socially inept hacker with no skills to speak of outside a terminal?

He had a gift for code, to be sure— no other engineer at Allsafe could’ve protected E Corp half as well. No other engineer Tyrell’s ever seen, in fact— except himself, of course.

So it makes a certain amount of sense, then, for E Corp’s newest (interim) CTO to recruit the only competent person at Allsafe as part of his first act in his new role: establishing E Corp’s first internal cybersecurity team. Elliot could set his price, handpick the rest of the team. Tyrell trusted him, instantly and beyond all logic.

All of Tyrell’s careful machinations and Elliot had just... happened into his path, already set upon complete obliteration of Terry Colby. It should have infuriated Tyrell, but it didn’t. In place of anger, he finds a fresh feeling: awe.

He sees it now: the red thread of fate had wound its way between them and if Tyrell doesn’t keep him close enough, it might snap.

A nod at the security guard and he’s stepping another elevator, shooting up through the building’s spine, headed for the penthouse. The floor is dead silent, lights flickering limply as his shoes click against the gleaming floor. The hallway ahead is dark, the door to the conference room shut. In the stillness, he can fairly see it: how everything is about to change. How Tyrell is the one changing it.

The legal team won’t be here for another half an hour, and while it suits Tyrell to be early to this meeting in particular, to install himself at the head of the circular table and seem too preoccupied to stand up as the lawyers file in, there’s one more call to make, and even more than his personal call to Joanna, this one must be made in absolute privacy.

The emergency exit door to the roof is, as he expects, jammed open with a makeshift wooden doorstop. Tyrell’s never seen another person up here, but the doorstop is proof he isn’t the only one seeking refuge at the top of a skyscraper walled in by 12-feet high glass panels. How many executives had to fling themselves over the side for those panels to be installed?

Regardless, the glass panelling has the welcome side effect of mitigating a great deal of the wind: Tyrell can slip in the door and back down the stairs to the conference room, not a hair out of place.If he relaxes his eyes, abandons focus, he can barely see the glint of glass. They might not be there at all.

But when focus returns, as it must, the rooftop is a glass cage again, walled in to prevent litigation and rising insurance premiums. Tyrell might as well be in a display case at a jeweller’s, though there are at least no security cameras pointed at him up here.

Who, then, is he on display for?

The sky above, when he tilts his head back, is heavy with thick clouds, a queasy grey colour that foretells rain. Where he’s standing, he might be the first person in the city the rain will hit when it begins to fall. Up here, he could say anything, scream anything, do anything and no one alive would know it.

Swallowed by the weight of the sky stretching over him, Tyrell thinks about Isaiah— God bidding the heavens to open up and rain down righteousness, splitting the earth so salvation can sprout alongside it.

God didn’t do it alone: Cyrus was there, his right hand.

Somewhere in the city, Elliot Alderson is drenched in victory from his dismantling of Terry Colby’s fetid legacy, Tyrell’s meteoric ascent an effect of the cause. Tyrell can feel a pull on the other end of the thread that binds them together, as if Elliot means to go on without him.

That’s far enough, now. Time to reel him back in.

Sutherland picks up on the first ring. Tyrell skips hello and rattles off two addresses: Allsafe and a shitty apartment in LES. “You’ll find the picture on your phone. He’ll be heading home soon— pick him up _en route_ and bring him to to me. The second building, top floor.”

Tyrell clears his throat, face warm as he continues: “And be nice.”

A minute pause on Sutherland’s end before he asks, voice deep and even: “If he doesn’t want to come?”

“Be _nice_.” The steel’s back in his voice by the time he hangs up. Good. He needs to keep his composure, to be that same affable, humble executive he’d been when they first met. No cracks can show around legal, at least. Elliot, though—

When he slips his phone back into his pocket, his clammy fingers stick against the surface. The humidity is so thick up here that the air has texture.

His pulse, when he checks it, is rabbit-fast. He braces his brow against the cool glass, taking one deep breath, then another. 

He takes his pulse again. Close enough. By the time he stretches a hand up toward the sky to meet the first drops of rain, his face is already glazed with tears.

He can allow it, this last time. He won’t ever be this weak again.

_-_

**LINUX.WIFATCH** — _released to the public in 2015, this open-source malware is designed to remove malicious infection by other malware_

A _farm._

The Dark Army’s trapped him on a motherfucking _farm_.

When the squat ochre building revealed itself under Irving’s headlights to be, of all things, a one-story farmhouse, Tyrell had, for a brief and hysterical moment, thought of flinging himself out of the snail-paced car and fleeing blindly into the woods. The impulse hit him in 4D— the crash of the branches around him, the smell of the wet dark, the ecstasy and terror of flight.

But it was followed immediately by a flash of the way Elliot had looked at him when he said _You should go_. Like it pained him. Like it scared him.

It wouldn’t do to get himself lost in the woods or shot before Elliot could make his way here. And it was a stupid plan, anyway. So Tyrell stayed seated as the car pulled into the drive, headlights casting the quaint footpath to the door in eerie, artificial light.

The lights flicked off as the car powered down. Irving let out a theatrical sigh of satisfaction and stepped out of the car, heading for the trunk and the “supplies” therein. He’d made Tyrell lie down in the backseat of the sedan while he strolled around a Target just outside the city, picking up non-perishable food and ill-fitting workout clothes for Tyrell.

A rapping on the window had Tyrell jolting in his seat. Irving’s grinning face loomed out of the darkness, hands loaded down with plastic bags. “You wanna give me a hand with the key, lazy bones?”

It’s all nightmarishly familiar: the converted barn with its unpainted walls, windows positioned in such a way to let in the absolute minimum natural light. The ceilings can’t be more than 7 feet high and the only overhead light fixed with an actual bulb is the kitchen. The radio on top of the fridge is dialled into a classical station that plays a lot of Haydn but the signal’s lost if he ever tries to move it. The TV antenna picks up three local channels, none of which seem to air a news program.

The lone bed, in the lone bedroom, is a twin-size, the sight of which sends a queasy thrill through Tyrell. The couch in the living room is hardly big enough for Elliot to sleep on.

Tyrell waits in the dim living room for the rumble of Irving’s car to recede completely into the night. Then he switches the lamp off and sits for another thirty minutes in the dark before he can’t bear it anymore. He throws the door open and just—runs.

He makes it up onto the hill near the barn, just under the tree, before he bends over, retching, chest heaving with panic. Irving had insisted Tyrell change out of his suit before he left— Tyrell protesting but unable to justify the necessity for it without revealing too much— but he’s glad for it now, sweating through a t-shirt and track pants. No dry cleaning a puke-stained suit in the middle of fucking nowhere.

It’s lighter outside than in the house, the sky lit up by a million stars and moon so bright and silver it looks like a cartoon, the kind of night that lies hidden behind smog and light pollution in the city. The night air is fresh, so clean it smells almost sweet.

The tag on his new shirt irritates the soft skin on the back of his neck, a familiar sensation that had faded completely from his memory until now. It’s been years since he’s worn clothes that weren’t custom. All those used t-shirts and hoodies with the tags carefully cut off— it’s strange the things you forget.

As far as he can make out, the grounds of the farm are lined with trees so thick and tall they can only be the beaten-back edge of a massive forest. Down the hill, the barn door is unlatched, creaking back and forth a little in the breeze.

Yesterday, he hadn’t it thought it possible to feel more trapped than he already was: the walls closing in on him at work, the cops calling, Joanna shutting him out at the hospital. Fifteen years, two degrees, a continent, an ocean, a marriage, a son, all that scheming and climbing, and he’s somehow wound up exactly where he started.

There are no fucking animals here, at least.

As if on cue, a cry sounds out from the trees, the kind of high-pitched scream that Tyrell _knows_ usually signifies a fox but— it’s been a rough few days.

Tyrell turns tail, sprinting back into the farmhouse, where he locks the door, draws all the curtains, does another cursory sweep for Dark Army bugs— still nothing, but there’s no way they left him here unobserved— cuts the tag off his nightshirt, and watches the glow of the sun rising through the drapes over the bedroom window.

Silence. Or not silence, but an absence of any sound besides the persistent squawking of birds.

Tyrell wakes in the dying light and finds himself transported back to the little cot in the corner of the farmhouse, the decaying walls emanating that familiar earthy reek. Everything always dying.

But no. There’s no one bent over a kitchen table in the far corner. No one hammering a broken-down barn back together outside.

Tyrell is alone.

In the bathroom mirror, his lip curls at the state of his reflection. Hair greasy, face wan, eyes swollen, bags prominent. He turns the cold water faucet on and ducks his face into the sink, gulping straight from the tap. The water is tinny, should probably be filtered, but it’s icy cold as it pours down his throat, cleansing the inside of his mouth. He stops to catch a breath, realizes he hadn’t brushed his teeth after puking last night. Pathetic.

His reflection contorts further.

This won’t do. 

Just because he’s dressed like a suburban dad playing pickup basketball with his high school buddies doesn’t mean he needs to look or behave like one. He darts out to the kitchen— the clock on the stove reads _7:07_ but he can’t be sure that it’s accurate— and turns on the old radio. More Haydn.

The shower and soap do wonders in making him feel more human again but he resists washing his hair— Irving bought him _Head & Shoulders_ shampoo, of all things. It’s got to be a dig.

The hot water cuts out too soon and he emerges shivering. Slicking his wet hair back from his forehead, he looks into the foggy mirror. From beneath the distortion, his hair looks better but the rest— it’s like 15-year-old Tyrell is looking at him through his own eyes. Stomach lurching, he covers the mirror with a spare towel and finally brushes his teeth, keeping his eyes on the porcelain sink.

The light keeps sinking, but he avoids opening any of the curtains. Flicking the lamp in the living room on, he tries the TV again, but still, no nightly news programs. It’s absurd— wouldn’t even a local station interrupt its programming to cover something as monumental as what he and Elliot have done?

They’ve shaken the world at its very foundation and he hasn’t gotten to see a second of it.

He shuts his eyes, tries to picture it: the news anchor barely concealing her panic as she reads the copy. Tyrell Wellick, former interim CTO, has effectively knee-capped E Corp. Everyone in the world likely knows his name by now. If his father is still alive, if the radio in his old truck is still working—

But what about Elliot? It isn’t right that Tyrell’s name should be read to the world without Elliot’s beside it. He sees that now. They’ll correct it soon enough. It’s unbearable, not knowing what he’s doing or if he’s unharmed— not to mention the lead time they’re losing on eliminating the paper backups. He can see the plan so clearly in his mind, but without his mobile or Elliot’s laptop, there’s nothing he can do.

All he can do is wait on this forsaken farm, at the Dark Army’s mercy, until they decide he can see Elliot again. _If_ they decide—

A sudden, persistent creaking breaks his concentration. It jars with the sound of his shallow, rapid breathing. Peering between two curtains, he can see the door on the barn swinging wildly back and forth again. Except— the branches of the big tree aren’t moving, and no rustling of leaves emanates from the forest just out of sight.

It could be nothing. It could be a curious animal. Irving had refused him a gun, insisted nothing could get past the Dark Army’s perimeter. And yet.

The evening is blossoming into twilight. It ought to be a relief after the claustrophobic dim of the farmhouse but Tyrell can feel it— the forest looms in the darkness and it’s hungry. He’s shivering a little in his hoodie, the cool air teasing his ankles where they show between the end of his sweatpants and the start of his sockless sneakers as he creeps— that’s the only word for it— toward the gaping maw of the barn.

He bites down hard on his lip to fend off the rising panic. How absurd would it be, after everything that’s happened in the last 48 hours, to die with not a soul around to mourn him?

 _There’s no one here_ , he tells himself firmly. He’s two feet from the barn door now. _There’s no one._ One foot. _No one._

Heart in his throat, Tyrell peers headfirst into the dark of the barn and— hearing no skittering, rustling, or other animal sound, no clicking of a safety— raises the trembling beam of the flashlight against the far corner of the barn.

_No—_

The light catches— the meaning of what he sees assembling itself in delayed pieces— first on two huge eyes, shining in the glowing moon of a disembodied face.

It isn’t until two hands come up into the flashlight beam that it all coalesces— two hands raised, palms up, a familiar voice stage-whispering “No!” as Tyrell drops the flashlight and barrels fully into the corner of the barn where Elliot Alderson hunches in a black hoodie.

The wall of the barn shakes a little with the impact, the force of Tyrell’s embrace sending them both slamming into the boards.

The whole damn thing could come crashing down. Tyrell wouldn’t notice.

Elliot, small, cold to the touch, and wonderfully alive, stands stiff in the curl of his arms. For just a moment. And then, miraculously, his arms draw up around Tyrell, not squeezing back, but holding. It’s enough— being held— to send a sob up out of his throat.

Tyrell is the one who stiffens now. There’s no way Elliot could have missed it, his ear pressed to Tyrell’s cheek. Tyrell clears his throat, moves his hands from where they’re clutched around Elliot’s back to a light grip on his shoulders.

“Sorry.” He’s taking a step back out of Elliot’s space when Elliot’s cold hands dart out, grabbing him and pulling him back in.

“No.” Elliot’s breath is warm on his neck as he whispers. “Dark Army’s got a camera up there.”

Gesturing with his chin, his eyes somehow gleaming in the low light, to one of the support beams in the barn. “This is the only place we’re out of sight.” There’s less than a foot between them.

In the sudden absence of panic and excess of proximity, Tyrell’s thoughts grow hazy, bumping into each other so he can’t get a solid grasp on them.

“The house is bugged— I don’t know where, exactly, but I’m certain of it.” His head bent, his eyes are fixed on his hands where they rest on Elliot’s shoulders. “How did you—?”

“Your phone case.“ Right. Irving would’ve turned off all the tracking functions on the phone but he mustn’t have thought to check the case.

His hands are soft now— manicured, all his calluses long-faded— but he can’t change the shape of them. His fingers are blunt and thick. Not elegant and articulate, like Elliot’s hands: the hands of an artist. Or a hacker.

“How did you get past the guards? It’s dangerous, shouldn’t have—“ He’s rambling absently, eyes still fixed on his hands, how big they look wrapped around the fine bones of Elliot’s shoulders. They’re hands built for hard work and no reward, inclined to brute force. Sharon Knowles had learned that the hard way.

“I need to talk to you.” Elliot’s ducking his head until he catches Tyrell’s downcast eyes with his own. His gaze when Tyrell finally meets it is intent, searching. “Do you remember what I told you two days ago?”

Tyrell nods dumbly.

Coney Island. Elliot had come when he’d called. No threat or fear in his voice when he’d told Tyrell where to meet him.

In the car he’d been evasive, all braggadocio and biting remarks, but by the time Tyrell had followed him outside, something had come over him.

For once, he wasn’t angry or remote. He’d looked at Tyrell like he was really seeing him for the first time. Eyes shining, lips parted: it had been like looking into a mirror. Which made it easy— or at least possible— for Tyrell to say something that he’d never said aloud to anyone.

_so much depends  
upon—_

If he was going to prison, if Joanna would never speak to him, if he’d never see his son again, at least he had told someone.

He’d offered it to Elliot freely. The first time in his life he’d ever given something without expectation of return. Without calculation of how it would be received. The truest thing about him.

Elliot didn’t speak for a long moment— his eyes, filled with sudden tears, blinked rapidly as he looked upward into the kind of heavy clouds that promised the wrath of the God Tyrell had been raised to fear— and when he did, his voice trembled with fearful softness. “What do you want, Tyrell?”

 _a red wheel  
barrow_—

Blinking did Tyrell no good. The tears crept out the corners of his eyes and crawled down his face. “To be known.”

Elliot nodded, his expression crumpling a little. “And what are you afraid of?”

 _glazed with rain  
water_—

“Dying unknown.”

It ought to have been absurd. They were two grown men standing in the middle of Coney Island. Sutherland was just a few feet away in the SUV. But it didn’t feel absurd.

It felt holy.

_beside the white  
chickens_

Still, it wasn’t enough for him. Tyrell needed _something_ in return. “What are you afraid of?”

Elliot blinked at the sky again, a flickering of lashes that shone wetly. “Myself,” he whispered, and the sound carried as if he’d spoken it directly into Tyrell’s ear.

They might’ve been the only people on Earth, for how still and quiet the world was. For them. Alone. Together.

“And what do you want?” Tyrell asked, his voice shaking as much as Elliot’s.

“Have you ever lied to me?” Elliot answered.

“No,” he said automatically, realizing belatedly that it was the truth. Something in Elliot had always drawn it out of him.

“I want— I need someone who will always tell me the truth. No matter what. Someone I can trust to do that.” Elliot was swaying on his feet. Though neither of them had stepped forward their bodies, Tyrell realized, were listing into the space that lay between them. “Even when I can’t trust myself. Especially then.”

As he spoke his eyes clouded over, expression going vacant for a heartbeat, before they cleared again, and he was intent upon Tyrell once more.

When he spoke again, it was the first time Tyrell had heard him sound truly frightened. “There isn’t much time. Can you—“

“Yes,” Tyrell said and meant it all: _yes, you can trust me to never lie to you. Yes, I will protect you from yourself. Yes, you will know me and I will know you._

He’d never been more certain of anything in his life.

Elliot’s voice is urgent, his hands still gripping Tyrell’s elbows. Tyrell’s hands are still on his shoulders. Even knowing what they’d done to Sharon Knowles, Elliot hasn’t flinched. “I need to tell you two things.”

“Did you drop my car off like Irving told you?” Tyrell interrupts.

“Not yet,” Elliot says impatiently. “Listen to me: I hid a USB in a pair of sunglasses in your SUV. If it’s still there when you get your car back, you need to get it to me. I need to see what’s on it.”

“What?” Elliot had walked through acres of forest to get here. “You must be thirsty. Let me get you some water.”

Elliot shakes his head. “There’s no time.”

“You need to rest, Elliot. You look exhausted.” He does, now that Tyrell’s taken a proper look. His face is pale, the deep valleys under his eyes even darker than usual.

Elliot’s grip is tight enough to bruise. Tyrell hopes it does. “This is important, Tyrell. I need you to pay attention.”

“Alright, yes, what is it?”

Elliot’s voice holds an echo of that same fear he’d heard on Coney Island. “I need you to promise me something—“

“Anything!” He’s given up on trying to keep his voice down. If the barn is bugged too, they’re beyond fucked already.

“I need you to promise that if I ever go too far, if I ever become a danger… you’ll stop me. No matter what it takes. Even if you have to hurt me.”

Hurting Elliot seems impossible. It doesn’t seem like something he could do even if he really tried.

Elliot shakes his elbows again. “I need you to promise me.”

“I do. I promise. Whatever it takes.”

Elliot sighs, the tension leaving his body so quickly that Tyrell, thinking he’s about to collapse, tightens his grip in response.

“Now sit down. I’ll get you some food and water.”

Elliot smile looks pained as shakes his head again. “No, there’s no time. I have to get your car back to the city.”

“You won’t make it back to the road in this state,” Tyrell is grasping for reasons. “We can explain it to Irving when he comes back— we need to be together, it’s the only way this will work.”

“I can’t—” Elliot’s hands loosen their grip, falling away from Tyrell.

“You can’t go!” Tyrell shouts. When Elliot doesn’t relent, he tries begging, desperation making him shameless: “Don’t leave me here. I can’t be— I can’t be alone here.”

“I’m sorry,” Elliot says. He sounds it. He looks it. “I can’t stay.”

Tyrell doesn’t know what it means, then. He will soon.

_-_

**DUQU 2.0** — _in 2015, this sophisticated malware infected computers in hotels in Austria and Switzerland, compromising nuclear negotiations with Iran_

The first time she said it, Tyrell had just crashed the car.

Up until the moment the guard rail tore a strip off the left side of the rental car, Tyrell had done everything right. Joanna had been gently prepping him for months— how to react, what to say, how to smile— and he’d followed it all to the letter. Be deferential, but not obsequious. Ask questions when led to them, but mostly just listen. Never, under any circumstances offer an opinion. He’d done everything right but it didn’t matter: he was still careening down the road in a panic, damp palms slipping around on the wheel until the howl of torn metal shocked him into breaking.

It was a big night for them — with Joanna freshly graduated, it was time to move in together, which meant it was time to get engaged, which meant it was time for Tyrell to meet the Olafsons properly and ask for her hand. Tyrell had already thoroughly charmed Mrs. Olafson on her last visit to Stockholm— tea houses and shopping trips and fine dining— but Mr. Olafson had mysteriously been pulled into last-minute business engagements each time Tyrell was due to meet him.

Joanna said they had to be strategic, to wait for the right moment and apparently this was it: a Christmas Eve proposal in Copenhagen.

Three days commuting on winter roads from Vesterbro to the country house— a sprawling mansion that, despite its six bedrooms, could apparently only host Tyrell and Joanna for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In the two days that led up to the holiday, they were saying in the Olafsons’ city flat, where they lived during the work week. The country house was reserved for weekends and occasions only, of course.

Despite all their careful planning, it only took one look at Mr. Olafson’s face for Tyrell to know that he had no hope of getting in the man’s good graces.

He was a short, sharp man— Tyrell could see the thinning hair on the crown of his head as they shook hands— and the thinly veiled contempt in his expression fairly screamed that Olafson had already extensively vetted Tyrell— and found him wanting.

“You’re a self-made man, aren’t you, Tyrell?” Olafson drawled over after-dinner whiskeys in his study that first night. His tone was approving, but the jut of chin made it clear what he really meant: he’d looked into Tyrell’s background.

There was no cause for concern there: Tyrell had cleaned it up long ago. Any electronic records now affirmed that Tyrell had been raised on a small farm by his mother and father until the age of 16, when he’d been tragically orphaned by a car accident and struck out on his own. But even that fairy tale clearly wasn’t enough for Olafson.

“Building yourself from the ground up is the only way to make a real impact in this world.”

Tyrell swallowed a scoff along with his whiskey. It was widely known that Olafson had “made himself” with the slight assistance of a 150,000 krone loan from his grandfather. He suppressed a grimace at the taste. Joanna had made it clear that choosing vodka over whiskey would’ve been the nail in his coffin.

But that was just the warm up: Olafson cleared his throat, his eyes on the fireplace. “My daughter is a very special person.”

Tyrell bit his lip as he nodded.

“She has never once failed to get the things she truly wants. But those aren’t always the same as the things she truly deserves. And we both know she deserves far more than you.”

Stomach roiling, face carefully blank, Tyrell forced himself to nod again.

“Now, she’s told me about all your grand plans. CEO of E Corp and all that—“ Tyrell conceals his surprise, but just barely. “But no matter how much renovating Joanna does, your foundation is rotten. Anyone who looks closely enough at you can see it. You’re unstable and when you fall apart you’ll bring her crashing down too.”

It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, from enough guidance counsellors and jilted lovers to last him a lifetime. _Unstable. Crazy. Unhinged._

“If you’re as smart as Joanna thinks you are, you’ll remove yourself before she comes to regret you.”

Tyrell’s vision clouded over.

In his mind’s eye, his half-full tumbler of whiskey crashed into the fireplace, burning the flesh off of Olfason’s skull, glass shattering into his eyes.

In reality, a gentle knock sounded on the door to Olafson’s study. The door swung open, revealing Joanna, bag and coat already in hand. She was tired from the flight— she needed Tyrell to drive her back to the city.

She’d saved him and he’d repaid her by nearly driving her off the road.

Tyrell hunched over the steering wheel as the car juddered to a stop, a raw scream of frustration tearing out of his throat.

Joanna, not a hair out of place, jerked back in her seat— he’d frightened her. He crashed a car with her in the passenger seat and now he’d frightened her.

He turned to her miserably: “I’ve ruined everything. I’m sorry.” He bent his face into his hands as the sobbing overtook him, wracking his body.

“Tyrell,” Joanna’s tone was steely, like she’d been saying his name for a while now. “Look at me.”

She pulled his hands from his face and his face toward hers. Her fingers were cool and soft against his hot cheeks.

“Listen to me now. My father is smart and a hard worker— like you— but he has had an easy life. He doesn’t understand sacrifice. He can’t imagine having to give anything up to get what he wants. Not like us.”

In the dark of the car, her blue eyes looked very black. “But that’s why I love you. Because you’re strong enough to do what it takes.”

It was the first time she’d said it to him. It was the first time anyone had said it to him like that. Not offhand, but like she really meant it.

“You love me?”

It had been the best night of his life— until two nights later, when he’d proposed on Christmas Eve with Olafson’s begrudging blessing. Joanna had accepted the ring they’d designed together and Tyrell had celebrated his first Christmas with family in a decade.

Joanna didn’t say it often— likely because she knew he needed it too much— but she’d said it again that night, as they curled together in a four-poster bed in the Olafson mansion, and Tyrell had been certain he finally had everything he wanted.

The last time she says it, on national television, Tyrell is in a dark basement, thinking about Elliot.

Then the foundation crumbles. The house collapses. She’ll never say it again.

_-_

**DRIDEX** — _in 2015, this sophisticated malware specializing in the theft of banking credentials stole more than $40 million from Windows users_

Tyrell Wellick is a hero. Tyrell Wellick is a grieving widower. Tyrell Wellick is a single father. Tyrell Wellick is CTO of E Corp.

Tyrell Wellick is choking.

So much of the day had unfolded with the cadence and eerie familiarity of a dream. Walking back into the New York building, met by raucous applause from an assembly of employees waiting in the lobby. Elizabeth ushering him into his new office, slim but nearly as long as Price’s. The list of outlets requesting interviews. The cards, flower arrangements, ties, bottles of whiskey covering his desk.

But as in a dream, everything is just one step away from _right_. The employees applaud him but Price is nowhere to be seen. The new office is big, but darker than the old one— it somehow never catches direct sunlight. He’s CTO of a massive company but the press tour is the only thing on his schedule. And his goddamn tie is knotted too tight.

It’s choking him.

7 o’clock rolls around. The camera crews and reporters trickle slowly out of the conference room. Tyrell rises, pulling at the knot in his tie as he looks out the enormous window. The city hums below him but his eyes are on the clouds, lit up by the remnants of sunset. He can feel Elizabeth lingering loyally by the door.

“You head home now,” he says to window. “My car’s on its way.”

The second he hears the elevator doors slide shut, he makes for the emergency exit door. The door to the roof is blessedly still propped open, though the wooden doorstop has been replaced with a decidedly sturdier cement block.

The last time he’d been up here, eight months and a lifetime ago, spring had just been ramping up. He’d spent the swell of summer trapped on the farm and by the time he’d gotten out of the basement and the interrogation room, the leaves had turned brown and the air had gone crisp and sharp again.

And here is, in the same glass cage that had boxed him in before. Nothing’s changed.

The door groans behind him.

Tyrell spins around, heart in his throat— ready for Price, Irving, Dark Army goons, even Whiterose.

Except this.

Even now, after everything he’s done, just the sight of Elliot sends an electric shudder all through him. He is abruptly more awake than he’s been in days. Since the last time he’d seen Elliot.

The split in his lip has mostly healed. All that remains is a raised red line, impossible to spot if you don’t know where to look. There is a little bruising on Tyrell’s knuckles, but no broken skin— the gloves had served their purpose.

Tyrell studies the face— its familiar, exaggerated features that are somehow ever-changing. He can never be sure “which” Elliot he’s getting: distant and cold, cruel but familiar, or disarmingly open.

When they were working nights together in the basement, Angela only ever called him “you,” talking about someone named Elliot as if he wasn’t in the room. She said she just knew, if she looked into his eyes long enough, who she was talking to. She’d see something in him, and flip from exacting and professional to tender and nurturing in a heartbeat.

Well, maybe Elliot never let Tyrell look into his eyes long enough. Or maybe it doesn’t seem all that different from the myriad selves that Tyrell, like Angela, has been depending on what was necessary. Maybe it didn’t matter “which” because when it came down to it, it was all just—

“Elliot. What are you doing? I thought—“

Before he’d left on Wednesday night, Elliot had been emphatic about no contact. It was the only way to sell Tyrell as a double agent— if Whiterose found out they were working together, it would ruin everything.

“It’s fine,” Elliot shrugs, drawing back his hood. “Price already thinks we’re… He saw us…” He trails off, ducking his head. “He’ll just think…”

What _would_ Price think of the way Elliot had been splayed out on Tyrell’s floor? When the knock had come and cut through the haze of fury, his body had been strangely giving beneath Tyrell’s weight, his arms spread and pliable for Tyrell. He’d taken his time getting up off the floor, made a show of wiping the blood off his mouth as he met Price’s eyes.

Tyrell’s face heats up for more than one reason.

Pleading for Price not to fire him, begging Elliot to leave AllSafe for him. At least he can’t drop any lower in Price’s estimation. With Elliot, it’s never clear where he stands or how much further he has to fall.

Right now, at least, they’re standing mutely on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in the city. What had been a sunny day keeps getting darker. And Elliot’s looking at him like he hasn’t seen him in months.

“Has something happened?” Tyrell asks. “I was waiting til I heard something from Price to contact you."

Elliot shrugs again.

"As we agreed,” Tyrell adds pointedly.

Tyrell, most of the way to drunk, hadn’t been easily convinced, but Elliot made it clear: _it was a dealbreaker_. He’d said it flat-out, in that icy way he had sometimes. There was no convincing him when he was like that.

“We did,” Elliot says now, dropping eye contact for the first time. “But there’s something I need to tell you, while I have the chance. I would’ve come sooner but my sister needed me.”

Always with his fucking _sister_.

“Do you remember what we walked about the farm?” As if it hadn’t haunted him for the last six months. Tyrell nods slowly. “Is it still true?”

 _Which part_ , Tyrell wants to ask, but he keeps his traitorous mouth shut and just nods again.

“I just… Thank you.” Elliot’s voice is low and thick with feeling. The wind carries it to Tyrell’s ears.

“I don’t think I’ve said that before.” He looks back up at a Tyrell, like he’s checking if that’s true. It is.

“Your life has been turned inside out since we met. I’m not going to apologize for that but I know how confusing it all must have been for you. How disappointing. And your—“ Tyrell’s fingers clench into fists reflexively, his knuckles throbbing. Elliot pauses, then course-corrects: “Your family.”

Tyrell looks up, desperate to quell the welling behind his eyes. If he can control it— just this once. Hebreathes in and out heavily and concentrates on relaxing his hands, finger by finger.

“I know it might not seem like it sometimes, but I do understand… that I need you. I’ve known since that day at Coney Island. When you spoke about fate.”

Tyrell has to turn his back to Elliot at that, which is an objectively idiotic thing to do, but he can’t bear for Elliot to see his face right now. He studies the sky. Elliot goes quiet. A chorus of sirens wails in the distance.

“I can’t finish this without you. Don’t let me forget that.” Quiet footsteps and then the pressing of bone against the top of his spine. A gasp or a sigh; Elliot resting the weight of his forehead against Tyrell’s back. Tyrell can feel the warmth of him through his suit jacket.

“I won’t.” Tyrell’s voice only wobbles a little. One of them is definitely sighing, but he’s not sure who.

Then Elliot’s hand darts out, his long, bony fingers reaching out to wrap around Tyrell’s hand. Tyrell can’t help it— a jolt of surprise and elation jerks through him at the contact.

Elliot must mistake it for a flinch because his grip relaxes, his hand beginning to draw back. Tyrell takes the opportunity to thread his clumsy fingers properly through Elliot’s. His knuckles ache.

“But I don’t want to keep hurting you,” Tyrell says and his voice breaks. Elliot’s fingers are sharp in the cage of Tyrell’s hand, but his palm is cool and dry, grounding Tyrell as he struggles to speak.

“The other night, I lost control. I tried to so hard, but—“ Tyrell swallows one sob. “You just wouldn’t _stop_.” The second one slips out his mouth.

_Every fucking time._

Elliot squeezes his hand, just a little. Tyrell squeezes back.

When Tyrell looks down from the sky,Elliot’s eyes are shining suspiciously too. He lets himself be led to the edge of the roof, lets Tyrell stare in silence at the quivering city below until he’s gathered himself enough to speak.

“I was supposed to show you this. After you accepted my job offer.” When Elliot had been _happy where he was_ and then gone on to execute the biggest hack the world’s ever seen. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t take it. It would’ve been so much easier to execute the hack from the inside. Even without my help.”

“It’s… hard to understand why I do the things I do. Even for me.” His eyes are on the view when Tyrell risks a look at him, tears mostly dried. His mouth is twisting with some obscure emotion.

Tyrell hadn’t even noticed the absence of nervous tension in him until he feels the tendons in Elliot’s hand tighten, watches his shoulders hunch and his jaw twitch.

“I have to go soon,” Elliot says abruptly.

Tyrell bites back a plea and follows reluctantly, unwilling to relinquish his grasp on Elliot’s hand.

They’re just steps outside the emergency exit door when he stops midstep. Elliot, half a step ahead of him, turns back in askance. Their linked hands are a thread connecting them.

“Wait,” Tyrell sniffles. “The security cameras. We can’t go down together.”

Something darts across Elliot’s face, contorting it briefly, before he nods.

“You go first.”

As their hands untangle, the pad of Elliot’s finger trails along the soft skin on the front of Tyrell’s ring finger and across his palm. Tyrell feels it in every cell of his body.

When he looks back through the swinging door, Elliot’s already drawn his hood back up, his face hidden in shadow.

_-_

**MYDOOM** — _the most devastating computer virus to date, this e-mail worm containing the message ‘andy; I’m just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry’ has caused more than $38 billion in damage_

Dying on Christmas Day. His father would’ve _loved_ that.

But he won’t know, will he? No one in the world will know or care that Tyrell is dying of a bullet wound in another godforsaken forest, except Elliot Alderson.

It hadn’t surprised him, when the bullet pierced his stomach. The pain had been extraordinary, of course, but there had been a grotesque _rightness_ about it— being shot in the same exact place he’d put a bullet in Elliot. Touching him one last time, and then walking into the clean, white snow, away from the mess he’d made.

Terry Colby disgraced. Scott Knowles passed over. The youngest CTO in E Corp history.

All the things he’s ever wanted. All the ways he’s warped himself, the conviction that if he played by the rules set out by men like Price, he’d get what was stolen from him before birth. Safety. Power. Control. Love.

And it was never enough; they kept moving the finish line. He was never rich enough, charming enough, cruel enough, American enough, straight enough, sane enough.

Now Joanna’s gone, and he’ll never hold his son. Thousands dead, of whom his mother and Sharon Knowles are just two.

And for what?

To die alone in the dark, weeping, without ever having told Elliot the one thing he’s always been trying to say:

_I love you._

_-_

**ETERNALBLUE** — _this cyberattack exploit developed by the NSA was stolen and leaked by hackers in 2017, and subsequently weaponized by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm_

In the best of all worlds, Tyrell Wellick is born a hospital room in Västergötland.

He’s raised to be a hard worker, first alongside his mother and father on the family farm, and then at his doting grandfather’s garage. He isn’t spoiled— his grandfather’s one extravagance is the IBM PC he gifts Tyrell on his sixth birthday.

After his grandfather’s death just before his sixteenth birthday and his parent’s tragic car accident just months later, he devotes himself almost entirely to technology.

At 18, he gets into his dream college, where he dates a girl name Lise, then a boy named Simon. He gets his heart broken by both.

By 25, he’s founded what will become the largest tech company— and eventually the second largest charity— in the world. His employees at F Corp are guaranteed a living wage, complete health coverage, and a union where needed.

By 33, Tyrell is something of a recluse, which really just means that he’s as shy as he is famous. He never marries— his public line is that he can’t subject another person to his work schedule, but privately, he believes his open-faced sincerity is too much for people. He still cuts the tags off his t-shirts.

The Tyrell that lives in Elliot’s mind isn’t _him_ , not really. He’s a Tyrell without sharp teeth, or a Tyrell who grew up not needing them.

He lets his work speak for itself, and on the rare occasions he does speak, the words are painstakingly considered and emerge slowly from his soft mouth. He has trouble making eye contact and his smiles are tentative, darting things— more minnows than shark’s grins. It would never occur to him to do something simply because it’s what other people expect of him, or to return hurt tenfold. He’s a decidedly softer creature, though just as strange and lonely. 

But when Elliot Alderson promises to always be on his side, and then actually makes good on that promise, something unlocks in Tyrell.

They become friends slowly, first over awkward phone calls, and then over business dinners and server tests. He supports Elliot through an emotionally fraught breakup, and Elliot insists on Tyrell spending Christmas, the anniversary of his parents’ accident, with the Alderson family.

When Tyrell finds that his feelings have blossomed into something deeper than friendship, he withdraws in fear— or tries to. After a brief, monotonous speech about the importance of maintaining professional boundaries during which Tyrell can’t even make eye contact, Elliot chases him out of Allsafe and into the street below, catching up with him in the middle of a crosswalk where he touches Tyrell on the shoulder until he turns reluctantly to face him.

The crossing countdown freezes at 2 when Elliot takes Tyrell’s face in his hands and says, “You aren't alone anymore. I know you. _I love you._ ” By the time they kiss, they’re both crying, and the white cars swerve around them without honking.

They spend the rest of their soft, strange lives together.

Tyrell Wellick will die for the last time in the same heartbeat that Elliot Alderson’s stops.

_-_

_we look for this ghost but the blind glass reflects back at us only a blank stare made from the most durable isotope of nothingness…_  
_alas the thing is hollow_  
_it goes on forever_

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes that bookend this story are fragmented transcriptions from Christian Bök’s haunting experimental poem _The Perfect Malware_. I couldn’t find an official transcript anywhere but you can listen to him read it [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQCKnz3LQbo)
> 
> The headers for each section have been bastardized from their respective Wikipedia pages... Sorry to these viruses.
> 
> The latter half of the story is heavily influenced by deleted scenes from 4x02, 4x04, and 4x11.
> 
> Apologies to any Swedish people, hackers, farmers, or cars reading this. I am not remotely qualified to write about these subjects— so naturally I wrote a novella-length story about them!


End file.
